Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 2:1
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
CH. Isa 2:2-4. ZION THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION IN THE LATTER DAYS
In this striking picture of the Messianic age the following features should be noticed: (i) The preeminence, amongst the mountains of the world, of Zion, the acknowledged seat of Jehovah’s universal dominion (cf. Jer 3:17; Psa 2:6; Psa 110:2, &c., also Eze 40:2). (ii) The extension of the true religion is effected, not by conquest, but by the moral influence of Israel’s theocratic institutions on surrounding peoples (cf. Isa 60:3). The submission of the nations is spontaneous; they are filled with eager desire to learn the ways of Jehovah (comp. Zec 2:11; Zec 8:22). Hence (iii) the nations retain their political independence. They are not conceived as absorbed in the Jewish nationality or as incorporated in a world-empire. Jehovah, not Israel, rules the world, and He rules it by His word, not by the sword. (iv) The authority of Jehovah, appealed to in all international disputes, brings war to an end, and ushers in an era of universal peace.
The representation is ideal, yet it contains little to which the hope of the Church does not look forward as the issue of the Christian dispensation. The only traces of the limitations of the Old Testament stand point spring from the idea of Zion as the earthly centre of Jehovah’s sovereignty. Even this has been understood literally by many Christians. But it is more in accordance with the analogy of prophecy to regard it as one of those symbols of spiritual truth, which, although conceived realistically by the prophets, were destined to be fulfilled in ways that could not be perfectly revealed until the true nature of God’s kingdom was disclosed by Christ.
The occurrence of this prophecy, with slight variations, in Mic 4:1-4, raises a difficult literary problem, for no one will now hold that the two prophets were independently inspired to utter identical words. Did Isaiah borrow from Micah or Micah from Isaiah, or both from some unknown earlier prophet? Against the first hypothesis it is pointed out that Micah’s prophetic career had not begun till a time considerably later than the date of these chapters; hence if either prophet borrowed from the other the citation must be on the part of Micah. But against this it is urged that its position in Isaiah and the want of connexion with what follows mark it out as a quotation, and also that it is given by Micah in what appears to be the more original form. Hence the third alternative (originally propounded by Koppe in the last century) has been widely accepted by critics. On this view the utterance of an older prophet has been adopted by Isaiah and Micah as a “classic” and perhaps popular expression of the ideal to which they both looked forward. But a theory which is reached by a process of exhaustion cannot command much confidence, especially when the process is after all not exhaustive. The possibility of a later insertion in both places cannot be ignored, and a certain presumption in favour of Isaiah’s authorship is furnished by resemblances both in matter and style to other passages in the book (Isa 11:1-8, Isa 32:1-8), (so Duhm). At the same time it cannot be denied that its connexion in the present passage is somewhat loose, and it must remain doubtful whether it was originally composed as the introduction to this group of prophecies or belongs to a later stage of Isaiah’s life. The assertion that the conception presented would be unintelligible in the age of Isaiah may be disregarded. As Wellhausen remarks, the prediction is one that would be remarkable in any age; it is perhaps even less surprising from the pen of Isaiah than from that of a later prophet.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The word – This indicates that this is the commencement of a new prophecy. It has no immediate connection with the preceding. It was delivered doubtless at a different time, and with reference to a different class of events. In the previous chapter the term vision is used Isa 2:1, but the meaning is substantially the same. The term word dabar, denotes a command, a promise, a doctrine, an oracle, a revelation, a message, a thing, etc. It means here, that Isaiah foresaw certain future events or things that would happen in regard to Judah and Jerusalem.
Judah … – see the notes at Isa 1:1.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 2:1
The word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem
Heading to a small collection
(chaps.
2-4), the contents of which are– Isa 2:1-4) All nations shall yet acknowledge the God of Israel. Isa 2:5-22; Isa 3:1-26; Isa 4:1) Through great judgments shall both Israel and thenations be brought to the knowledge of Jehovah Isa 4:2-6) When these judgments are overpast, all Zions citizens shall be holy. (A. B. Davidson, LL. D.)
A general view of the chapter
The Isa 2:2-4, it should be premised, recur with slight variations in the fourth chapter of Micah, and are supposed by many to have been borrowed by both writers from some older source. The prophet appears before an assembly of the people, perhaps on a Sabbath, and recites this passage, depicting in beautiful and effective imagery the spiritual preeminence to be accorded in the future to the religion of Zion He would dwell upon the subject further; but scarcely has he begun to speak when the disheartening spectacle meets his eye of a crowd of soothsayers, of gold and silver ornaments and finery, of horses and idols; his tone immediately changes, and he bursts into a diatribe against the foreign and idolatrous fashions, the devotion to wealth and glitter, which he sees about him, and which extorts from him in the end the terrible wish, Therefore forgive them not (verses 5-9). And then, in one of his stateliest periods, Isaiah declares the judgment about to fall upon all that is tall and lofty, upon Uzziahs towers and fortified walls, upon the great merchant ships at Elath, upon every object of human satisfaction and pride, when wealth and rank will be impotent to save, when idols will be cast despairingly aside, and when all classes alike will be glad to find a hiding place, as in the old days of Midianite invasion or Philistine oppression (Jdg 6:2; 1Sa 13:6), in the clefts and caves of the rocks. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Isaiahs citizenship in Jerusalem
Isaiahs citizenship in Jerusalem colours all his prophecy. More than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal, Florence to Dante, is Jerusalem to Isaiah. She is his immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the one thing worth preserving amidst its disasters, the summit of those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. He has traced for us the main features of her position and some of the lines of her construction, many of the great figures of her streets, the fashions of her women, the arrival of embassies, the effect of rumours. He has painted her aspect in triumph, in siege, in famine, and in earthquake; war filling her valleys with chariots, and again nature rolling tides of fruitfulness up to her gates; her moods of worship and panic and profligacy–till we see them all as clearly as the shadow following the sunshine and the breeze across the cornfields of our own summers. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
Judah and Jerusalem
There is little about Judah in these chapters: the country forms but a fringe to the capital. (Prof. G. A. Smith, D. D.)
The Word of the Lord seen
Though the spirit of man has neither eyes nor ears, yet when enabled to perceive the supersensuous, it is altogether eye. (F. Delitzsch.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER II
Prophecy concerning the kingdom of the Messiah, and the
conversion of the Gentile world, 1-5.
Great wickedness and idolatry of the unbelieving Jews, 6-9.
Terrible consternation that will seize the wicked, who shall in
vain seek for rocks and mountains to hide them from the face
of God in the day of his judgments, 10-17.
Total destruction of idolatry in consequence of the
establishment of Messiah’s kingdom, 18-21.
An exhortation to put no confidence in man, 22.
The prophecy contained in the second, third, and fourth chapters, makes one continued discourse. The first five verses of Isa 2:1-5 foretell the kingdom of Messiah, the conversion of the Gentiles, and their admission into it. From the sixth verse to the end of the second chapter Isa 2:6-22 is foretold the punishment of the unbelieving Jews for their idolatrous practices, their confidence in their own strength, and distrust of God’s protection; and moreover the destruction of idolatry, in consequence of the establishment of Messiah’s kingdom. The whole of the third chapter, with the first verse of the fourth, is a prophecy of the calamities of the Babylonian invasion and captivity; with a particular amplification of the distress of the proud and luxurious daughters of Sion; Isa 4:2-6 promises to the remnant, which shall have escaped this severe purgation, a future restoration to the favour and protection of God.
This prophecy was probably delivered in the time of Jotham, or perhaps in that of Uzziah, as Isaiah is said to have prophesied in his reign; to which time not any of his prophecies is so applicable as that of these chapters. The seventh verse of the second, and the latter part of the third chapter, plainly point out times in which riches abounded, and luxury and delicacy prevailed. Plenty of silver and gold could only arise from their commerce; particularly from that part of it which was carried on by the Red Sea. This circumstance seems to confine the prophecy within the limits above mentioned, while the port of Elath was in their hands; it was lost under Ahaz, and never recovered.
NOTES ON CHAP. II
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The word; or, the matter or thing, as this Hebrew word commonly signifies; the prophecy or vision.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. The inscription.
The wordtherevelation.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw,…. That is, the vision which he saw, for a new one here begins, though agreeable to what goes before; or the prophecy of future things, which he had given to him in a visionary way. The Targum paraphrases it,
“the word of prophecy, which Isaiah, the son of Amoz, prophesied:”
or the thing, the “decree”, as some choose to render it, the purpose of God concerning things to come, which was revealed to the prophet, and he here declares:
concerning Judah and Jerusalem; the church and people of God, and what should befall them and their enemies in the latter day: this inscription stands for this and the three following chapters.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The limits of this address are very obvious. The end of Isa 4:1-6 connects itself with the beginning of chapter 2, so as to form a circle. After various alternations of admonition, reproach, and threatening, the prophet reaches at last the object of the promise with which he started. Chapter 5, on the other hand, commences afresh with a parable. It forms an independent address, although it is included, along with the previous chapters, under the heading in Isa 2:1: “The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw over Judah and Jerusalem.” Chapters 2-5 may have existed under this heading before the whole collection arose. It was then adopted in this form into the general collection, so as to mark the transition from the prologue to the body of the book. The prophet describes what he here says concerning Judah and Jerusalem as “the word which he saw.” When men speak to one another, the words are not seen, but heard. But when God spoke to the prophet, it was in a supersensuous way, and the prophet saw it. The mind indeed has no more eyes than ears; but a mind qualified to perceive what is supersensuous is altogether eye.
The manner in which Isaiah commences this second address is altogether unparalleled. There is no other example of a prophecy beginning with . And it is very easy to discover the reason why. The praet. consecutivum v’hayah derives the force of a future from the context alone; whereas the fut. consecutivum vay’hi (with which historical books and sections very generally commence) is shown to be an aorist by its simple form. Moreover, the Vav in the fut. consecut. has almost entirely lost its copulative character; in the praet. consec. , on the other hand, it retains it with all the greater force. The prophet therefore commences with “and”; and it is from what follows, not from what goes before, that we learn that hayah is used in a future sense. But this is not the only strange thing. It is also an unparalleled occurrence, for a prophetic address, which runs as this does through all the different phases of the prophetic discourses generally (viz., exhortation, reproof, threatening, and promise), to commence with a promise. We are in a condition, however, to explain the cause of this remarkable phenomenon with certainty, and not merely to resort to conjecture. Isa 2:2-4 do not contain Isaiah’s own words, but the words of another prophet taken out of their connection. We find them again in Mic 4:1-4; and whether Isaiah took them from Micah, or whether both Isaiah and Micah took them from some common source, in either case they were not originally Isaiah’s.
(Note: The historical statement in Jer 26:18, from which we learn that it was in the days of Hezekiah that Micah uttered the threat contained in Mic 3:12 (of which the promise sin Mic 4:1-4 and Isa 2:2-4 are the direct antithesis), apparently precludes the idea that Isaiah borrowed from Micah, whilst the opposite is altogether inadmissible, for reasons assigned above. Ewald and Hitzig have therefore come to the conclusion, quite independently of each other, that both Micah and Isaiah repeated the words of a third and earlier prophet, most probably of Joel. And the passage in question has really very much in common with the book of Joel, viz., the idea of the melting down of ploughshares and pruning-hooks (Joe 3:10), the combination of rab (many) and atsum (strong), of gephen (vine) and te’enah (fig-tree), as compared with Mic 4:4; also the attesting formula, “For Jehovah hath spoken it” ( Chi Jehovah dibber : Joe 3:8), which is not found in Micah, whereas it is very common in Isaiah – a fact which makes the sign itself a very feeble one (cf., 1Ki 14:11, also Oba 1:18). Hitzig, indeed, maintains that it is only by restoring this passage that the prophetic writings of Joel receive their proper rounding off and an appropriate termination; but although swords and spears beaten into ploughshares and pruning-hooks form a good antithesis to ploughshares and pruning-hooks beaten into swords and spears (Joe 3:10), the coming of great and mighty nations to Mount Zion after the previous judgment of extermination would be too unprepared or much too abrupt a phenomenon. On the other hand, we cannot admit the force of the arguments adduced either by E. Meier ( Joel, p. 195) or by Knobel and G. Baur ( Amos, p. 29) against the authorship of Joel, which rest upon a misapprehension of the meaning of Joel’s prophecies, which the former regards as too full of storm and battle, the latter as too exclusive and one-sided, for Joel to be the author of the passage in question. At the same time, we would call attention to the fact, that the promises in Micah form the obverse side to the previous threatenings of judgment, so that there is a presumption of their originality; also that the passage contains as many traces of Micah’s style (see above at Isa 1:3) as we could expect to find in these three verses; and, as we shall show at the conclusion of this cycle of predictions (chapters 1-6), that the historical fact mentioned in Jer 26:18 may be reconciled in the simplest possible manner with the assumption that Isaiah borrowed these words of promise from Micah. (See Caspari, Micha, p. 444ff.))
Nor was it even intended that they should appear to be his. Isaiah has not fused them into the general flow of his own prophecy, as the prophets usually do with the predictions of their predecessors. He does not reproduce them, but, as we may observe from the abrupt commencement, he quote them. It is true, this hardly seems to tally with the heading, which describes what follows as the word of Jehovah which Isaiah saw. But the discrepancy is only an apparent one. It was the spirit of prophecy, which called to Isaiah’s remembrance a prophetic saying that had already been uttered, and made it the starting-point of the thoughts which followed in Isaiah’s mind. The borrowed promise is not introduced for its own sake, but is simply a self-explaining introduction to the exhortations and threatenings which follow, and through which the prophet works his way to a conclusion of his own, that is closely intertwined with the borrowed commencement.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Increase of the Church Predicted. | B. C. 758. |
1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD‘s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. 3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
The particular title of this sermon (v. 1) is the same with the general title of the book (ch. i. 1), only that what is there called the vision is here called the word which Isaiah saw (or the matter, or thing, which he saw), the truth of which he had as full an assurance of in his own mind as if he had seen it with his bodily eyes. Or this word was brought to him in a vision; something he saw when he received this message from God. John turned to see the voice that spoke with him. Rev. i. 12.
This sermon begins with the prophecy relating to the last days, the days of the Messiah, when his kingdom should be set up in the world, at the latter end of the Mosaic economy. In the last days of the earthly Jerusalem, just before the destruction of it, this heavenly Jerusalem should be erected, Heb 12:22; Gal 4:26. Note, Gospel times are the last days. For 1. They were long in coming, were a great while waited for by the Old-Testament saints, and came at last. 2. We are not to look for any dispensation of divine grace but what we have in the gospel, Gal 1:8; Gal 1:9. 3. We are to look for the second coming of Jesus Christ at the end of time, as the Old-Testament saints did for his first coming; this is the last time, 1 John ii. 18.
Now the prophet here foretels,
I. The setting up of the Christian church, and the planting of the Christian religion, in the world. Christianity shall then be the mountain of the Lord’s house; where that is professed God will grant his presence, receive his people’s homage, and grant instruction and blessing, as he did of old in the temple of Mount Zion. The gospel church, incorporated by Christ’s charter, shall then be the rendezvous of all the spiritual seed of Abraham. Now it is here promised, I. That Christianity shall be openly preached and professed; it shall be prepared (so the margin reads it) in the top of the mountains, in the view and hearing of all. Hence Christ’s disciples are compared to a city on a hill, which cannot be hid, Matt. v. 14. They had many eyes upon them. Christ himself spoke openly to the world, John xviii. 20. What the apostles did was not done in a corner, Acts xxvi. 26. It was the lighting of a beacon, the setting up of a standard. Its being every where spoken against supposes that it was every where spoken of. 2. That is shall be firmly fixed and rooted; it shall be established on the top of the everlasting mountains, built upon a rock, so that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, unless they could pluck up mountains by the roots. He that dwells safely is said to dwell on high, ch. xxxiii. 16. The Lord has founded the gospel Zion. 3. That it shall not only overcome all opposition, but overtop all competition; it shall be exalted above the hills. This wisdom of God in a mystery shall outshine all the wisdom of this world, all its philosophy and all its politics. The spiritual worship which it shall introduce shall put down the idolatries of the heathen; and all other institutions in religion shall appear mean and despicable in comparison with this. See Ps. lxvi. 16. Why leap ye, ye high hills? This is the hill which God desires to dwell in.
II. The bringing of the Gentiles into it. 1. The nations shall be admitted into it, even the uncircumcised, who were forbidden to come into the courts of the temple at Jerusalem. The partition wall, which kept them out, kept them off, shall be taken down. 2. All nations shall flow into it; having liberty of access, they shall improve their liberty, and multitudes shall embrace the Christian faith. They shall flow into it, as streams of water, which denotes the abundance of converts that the gospel should make and their speed and cheerfulness in coming into the church. They shall not be forced into it, but shall naturally flow into it. Thy people shall be willing, all volunteers, Ps. cx. 3. To Christ shall the gathering of the people be, Gen. xlix. 10. See Isa 60:4; Isa 60:5.
III. The mutual assistance and encouragement which this confluence of converts shall give to one another. Their pious affections and resolutions shall be so intermixed that they shall come in in one full stream. As, when the Jews from all parts of the country went up thrice a year to worship at Jerusalem, they called on their friends in the road and excited them to go along with them, so shall many of the Gentiles court their relations, friends, and neighbours, to join with them in embracing the Christian religion (v. 3): “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord; though it be uphill and against the heart, yet it is the mountain of the Lord, who will assist the assent of our souls towards him.” Note, Those that are entering into covenant and communion with God themselves should bring as many as they can along with them; it becomes Christians to provoke one another to good works, and to further the communion of saints by inviting one another into it: not, “Do you go up to the mountain of the Lord, and pray for us, and we will stay at home;” nor, “We will go, and do you do as you will;” but, “Come, and let us go, let us go in concert, that we may strengthen one another’s hands and support one another’s reputation:” not, “We will consider of it, and advise about it, and go hereafter;” but, Come, and let us go forthwith. See Ps. cxxii. 1. Many shall say this. Those that have had it said to them shall say it to others. The gospel church is here called, not only the mountain of the Lord, but the house of the God of Jacob; for in it God’s covenant with Jacob and his praying seed is kept up and has its accomplishment; for to us now, as unto them, he never said, Seek you me in vain, ch. xlv. 19. Now see here, 1. What they promise themselves in going up to the mountain of the Lord; There he will teach us of his ways. Note, God’s ways are to be learned in his church, in communion with his people, and in the use of instituted ordinances–the ways of duty which he requires us to walk in, the ways of grace in which he walks towards us. It is God that teaches his people, by his word and Spirit. It is worth while to take pains to go up to his holy mountain to be taught his ways, and those who are willing to take that pains shall never find it labour in vain. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. 2. What they promise for themselves and one another: “If he will teach us his ways, we will walk in his paths; is he will let us know our duty, we will by his grace make conscience of doing it.” Those who attend God’s word with this humble resolution shall not be sent away without their lesson.
IV. The means by which this shall be brought about: Out of Zion shall go forth the law, the New-Testament law, the law of Christ, as of old the law of Moses from Mount Sinai, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The gospel is a law, a law of faith; it is the word of the Lord; it went forth from Zion, where the temple was built, and from Jerusalem. Christ himself began in Galilee, Mat 4:23; Luk 23:5. But, when he commissioned his apostles to preach the gospel to all nations, he appointed them to begin in Jerusalem, Luke xxiv. 47. See Rom. xv. 19. Though most of them had their homes in Galilee, yet they must stay at Jerusalem, there to receive the promise of the Spirit, Acts i. 4. And in the temple on Mount Zion they preached the gospel, Acts v. 20. This honour was allowed to Jerusalem, even after Christ was crucified there, for the sake of what it had been. And it was by this gospel, which took rise from Jerusalem, that the gospel church was established on the top of the mountains. This was the rod of divine strength, that was sent forth out of Zion, Ps. cx. 2.
V. The erecting of the kingdom of the Redeemer in the world: He shall judge among the nations. He whose word goes forth out of Zion shall by that word not only subdue souls to himself, but rule in them, v. 4. He shall, in wisdom and justice, order and overrule the affairs of the world for the good of his church, and rebuke and restrain those that oppose his interest. By his Spirit working on men’s consciences he shall judge, and rebuke shall try men and check them; his kingdom is spiritual, and not of this world.
VI. The great peace which should be the effect of the success of the gospel in the world (v. 4): They shall beat their swords into ploughshares; their instruments of war shall be converted into implements of husbandry; as, on the contrary, when war is proclaimed, ploughshares are beaten into swords, Joel iii. 10. Nations shall then not lift up sword against nation, as they now do, neither shall they learn war any more, for they shall have no more occasion for it. This does not make all war absolutely unlawful among Christians, nor is it a prophecy that in the days of the Messiah there shall be no wars. The Jews urge this against the Christians as an argument that Jesus is not the Messiah, because this promise is not fulfilled. But, 1. It was in part fulfilled in the peaceableness of the time in which Christ was born, when wars had in a great measure ceased, witness the taxing, Luke ii. 1. 2. The design and tendency of the gospel are to make peace and to slay all enmities. It has in it the most powerful obligations and inducements to peace; so that one might reasonably have expected it should have this effect, and it would have had it if it had not been for those lusts of men from which come wars and fightings. 3. Jew and Gentiles were reconciled and brought together by the gospel, and there were no more such wars between them as there had been; for they became one sheepfold under one shepherd. See Eph. ii. 15. 4. The gospel of Christ, as far as it prevails, disposes men to be peaceable, softens men’s spirits, and sweetens them; and the love of Christ, shed abroad in the heart, constrains men to love one another. 5. The primitive Christians were famous for brotherly love; their very adversaries took notice of it. 6. We have reason to hope that this promise shall yet have a more full accomplishment in the latter times of the Christian church, when the Spirit shall be poured out more plentifully from on high. Then there shall be on earth peace. Who shall live when God doeth this? But do it he will in due time, for he is not a man that he should lie.
Lastly, Here is a practical inference drawn from all this (v. 5): O house of Jacob! come you, and let us walk in the light of the Lord. By the house of Jacob is meant either, 1. Israel according to the flesh. Let them be provoked by this to a holy emulation, Rom. xi. 14. “Seeing the Gentiles are thus ready and resolved for God, thus forward to go up to the house of the Lord, let us stir up ourselves to go too. Let is never be said that the sinners of the Gentiles were better friends to the holy mountain than the house of Jacob.” Thus the zeal of some should provoke many. Or, 2. Spiritual Israel, all that are brought to the God of Jacob. Shall there be such great knowledge in gospel times (v. 3) and such great peace (v. 4), and shall we share in these privileges? Come then, and let us live accordingly. What ever others do, come, O come! let us walk in the light of the Lord. (1.) Let us walk circumspectly in the light of this knowledge. Will God teach us his ways? Will he show us his glory in the face of Christ? Let us then walk as children of the light and of the day,Eph 5:8; 1Th 5:8; Rom 13:12. (2.) Let us walk comfortably in the light of this peace. Shall there be no more war? Let us then go on our way rejoicing, and let this joy terminate in God, and be our strength, Neh. viii. 10. Thus shall we walk in the beams of the Sun of righteousness.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
ISAIAH – CHAPTER 2
THE DAY OF THE LORD – AN INITIAL VISION OF THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM, (2:1-5:30)
THE NATURE OF THE COMING KINGDOM, (Verse 1-4)
1. Like the opening verse of chapter 1, the prophet directs these words to a specific people who had so departed from the way of the Lord as to be in danger of forfeiting many blessings which they had come to consider irrevocably theirs.
2. “The last days” is an expression that the Jews applied to the close of the age – just prior to the coming of the Messiah to inaugurate a new age, and establish His own glorious rule over the whole earth.
3. A “mountain”, in biblical symbolism, denotes governmental authority – in this instance, a kingdom. The establishment here foreseen is that of a literal, visible Messianic kingdom of righteousness – in power and great glory – with Jerusalem as its Capital, (Verse 2-3; Isa 1:25-26; Isa 58:12-14; Jer 23:5-8; Jer 33:7), and Jesus Christ as its divine king.
4. “The LORD’S house” refers to His covenant-community (the nation of Israel as set in a relationship of covenant fellowship with Himself on Mt Sinai) – a peculiar people who are very dear to Him.
a. Though called to such a position of opportunity and blessing, Israel, through rebellion and the disobedience of unbelief, has forfeited it all. (Nevertheless, God remains faithful to the faith of individual Israelites whose hearts have remained true to Him.)
b. In the New Testament church our Lord raised up a new house, with whom He established His New Covenant, and is now preparing to share the fullness of blessing and authority in His coming reign of righteousness, (1Ti 3:15; Mar 13:34; Heb 3:1-6; Heb 3:12-14; Eph 2:19-22; etc.).
5. Exalted above all other people, this covenant-community will be highly honored in the coming age – all others bowing before them (in service), and the wealth of the Gentiles flowing into them, (1Pe 2:9-10; Php_1:29; 2Ti 2:12; Rev 5:10; Rom 8:17-18; etc.).
6. In the coming millennial era, the Lord will again dwell among His people – reigning from Mt Zion, in Jerusalem.
a. Many will then seek instruction in His ways – that they may walk therein.
b. The authoritative “law of the LORD” will, in that day, go forth from Jerusalem, and the Lord Jesus will reign supremely.
c. With justice and equity He will rule over all nations with a rod of iron, (Rev 2:27; Rev 12:5; Rev 19:15; cf. Psa 2:9).
d. Since warfare will cease, the costly armaments of destruction may be converted into instruments of productivity for the common good.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw This prophecy is a confirmation of that doctrine which we had a little before, concerning the restoration of the Church. For since it is difficult to cherish the hope of safety, when we are, as it were, in the midst of destruction, while the wrath of God burns and consumes everything far and wide, or while his threatenings strike terror into our minds, at such a period the bare promises are hardly sufficient to support us and to allay our fears. For this reason the Lord determined that to the consolation which had already been proclaimed there should be added this special vision, by way of confirmation, in order to make it more certain and undoubted that, whatever calamities might arise, his Church would never perish. I have no doubt, therefore, but that this vision agrees with what is stated in the 26 and 27 verses of the former chapter.
Hence we learn what was the advantage and design of visions; for since doctrine sometimes has not sufficient weight with us, God therefore adds visions, that by means of them he may seal his doctrine to us. Since, therefore, this vision is connected with the former promise, we learn from it this useful doctrine, that all visions of every kind which God formerly gave to his Prophets must be joined to the promises in such a manner as to be seals of them. And thus we perceive more and more the astonishing goodness of God, that, not satisfied with giving us his bare word, he places before our eyes, as it were, representations of the events.
He has added a confirmation, that the restoration of the Church is a matter of very great importance, and necessary to be known. For where is the truth of the Lord, where is faith, if there be no Church? If there be none, it follows that God is a liar, and that everything contained in his word is false. But as God frequently shows, by striking proofs, that he preserves the Church by unknown methods and without the assistance of men, so he now declares by a remarkable prediction that he will do this.
There were two purposes to be served by this prediction. First, since Isaiah, and others who came after him, were unceasingly to proclaim terror, on account of the obstinate wickedness of the people, until the temple should be burnt, and the city destroyed, and the Jews carried into captivity, it was necessary that such severity should be mitigated towards believers by some consolation of hope. Secondly, as they were to languish in captivity, and as their minds were shaken, even after their return, by a succession of varied calamities, and at length were almost overwhelmed with despair by the dreadful desolation and confusion, they might a hundred times have fainted, if they had not been upheld. As to those who had already fallen, they were raised up and confirmed by the promised restoration, to such an extent, at least, that they retained among them the practice of calling on God, which is the only and undoubted remedy for the worst of evils. הדבר, ( haddabar,) the word, is rendered by some interpreters the thing, which accords with the general signification of this term; but it is better to view it as denoting a divine purpose. Isaiah says that it was revealed to him by a special vision.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
ISAIAHS VISION OF THE LAST DAYS
Isa. 2:1-5. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw, &c.
1. The marvellous power of the ancient prophets in giving embodiment and figure to the Word of God. It was a word that Isaiah saw; not that he heard, but that shaped itself before his vision, and made him glad, as if a new star had arisen to guide him.
2. Isaiah speaks with magnificent confidence as to the summing up of earthly dispensations. Casting his eye overall the uproar and tumults of intervening time, he sees a heavenly repose settling on the engagements and destinies of mankind. Herein is the peculiar power of the old prophets, viz., that they did not confine their attention within a brief and inadequate period, but projected their minds over historic spaces within which, so to speak, God had room to disclose somewhat of the proportions and significance of His plans. The whole year can never be judged from any one season. The prophets seemed to see things in their wholeness, and this made them calm in the midst of transitory confusion and distress.
3. The house of the Lord is to be exalted above all rivalry. The strength of the hills is to be a pedestal for the sanctuary. At the last right shall be uppermost, and holiness supreme. In the last days the house of the Lord shall exert a universal fascination; nation shall challenge nation to go up in holy and triumphant procession to the heights of Zion; and the voice of other allurements shall be lost in the infinite charm of the invitation.
4. Nor is this to be the indulgence of a mere sentiment; it will be the expression of a desire to be spiritually right, and thus to be spiritually secure: He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths. Lawless sentiment is to have no place in spiritual discipline. We are not called to a high revel, but to a pure and tender obedience to an unchangeable law.
5. The house of the Lord is to be a centre of judgment and rebuke towards people who are living in impiety and political corruption. The consequence of this judgment, if properly received, will be the establishment and perpetuation of righteous peace. When the nations are right with God, they will be right with each other. Merely negative peace may be disturbed, but the peace which comes by righteousness will be its own guarantee of completeness and continuity.
6. All these blissful anticipations should constrain towards present obedience, and be fruitful of present joy. So the prophet thought when he exclaimed, O house of Jacob, come ye, &c. Those who have great prospects should even now show themselves to be the heirs of glory. Christian joy is not all future. Even now, though we have to complain of so much of cloud and storm, there is a light that is distinctively divine, and under its benign rays we ought to walk until the fuller glory is revealed.Joseph Parker, D.D.
THE LATTER-DAY GLORY
Isa. 2:2-5. And it shall come to pass in the last days, &c.
Theme: The Glory of the Latter Days. The last days, when men shall no longer need to offer the prayer, Thy kingdom come. The glory of the latter days will consist
I. In the exaltation of the Lords house above all other institutions (Isa. 2:2). Now the Exchange, the Senate, the University, &c., are the great mountains of society; then the sanctuary will be supreme. In other words, religion will be the ruling force in society, dominating and directing all the others. This is the truth set forth by the figure of the upraising of Mount Zion above all the other mountains, so as to be visible in all directions.
II. In universal submission to the authority of God (Isa. 2:3). Not by the Jews only (as in Isaiahs time), but by all nations [499] and not (as now) by some individuals merely, but by all nations, will this authority be recognised and obeyed. Sin will be the exception, righteousness the rule. And so, as a consequence of this
[499] What words are these! What ideas! What radiances of glory and hope for the long-afflicted Church! Nations abolishing war and crimes, to cultivate righteousness and peace! nations emerging from ignorance and idolatry, to join themselves to the Church, and to walk in the light of the Lord! How marvellous that words like these should proceed from the Hebrew prophets! that men of the most confined education with regard to the Gentiles should thus lose the glory of Israel in the overflowing glory of the converted world! Can we ask for clearer proof that those holy men were purely the organs of the Holy Ghost, and transported in the spirit to publish the righteousness of God to every nation and language of the earth?Sutcliffe.
I would urge the thoughtful consideration of these verses (29) on any one who is perplexed by the confident assertion of writers who prefer vague declamation to close investigation and reasoning, that the Hebrew prophets were actuated by a bitter hatred of foreigners. He will, I think, discover (from this and such like study) that they were possessed by views and hopes of a philanthropy which even our own times have not been able to extend: they longed for fellowship with all men, under the only conditions in which fellowship is possible; they desired an universal communion of virtue, humanity, and goodness, and could not be content to have a general licenses of vice, brutality, and wickedness instead; and they advocated what they saw, and what all history has proved, to be the only way of avoiding the one and securing the other.Strachey.
III. In universal peace among men (Isa. 2:4) [502] All contentions necessarily cease when men know and do the will of God. Jas. 3:14 to Jas. 4:1. Love towards man always results from genuine love towards God.
[502] This verse shows that there will come a time when men shall have found out that they are men and not brutes, and when they shall settle matters, not by the force of their animal powers, but by the force of superior intelligence.James Wells.
A contemplation of their glorious future is calculated
1. To sustain us amid the sins and sorrows of our time. When we look at the condition of the world as it is, we are tempted to despair. But there is a better day to come. In the widening diffusion of Christian truth, and in the growing power of Christian principle, even now we may see at least streaks of light which tell that the dawn is near.
2. To animate us in our efforts to regenerate society. These efforts are not in vain, though they sometimes seem so. We are working in the line of victory (1Co. 15:58).
3. The blessings of the future we can make our own now. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord, that is, in His paths (Isa. 2:3). We can make religion the supreme force of our life, and can act with a constant recognition of Gods authority; and doing this, we shall have peacewith God, with ourselves, and in our homes. (Isa. 32:17-18).
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
B. THE IMPLORING APPEAL CHAPTERS 2 4
CHAPTER TWO
1.
VISION OF THE COMING MESSIANIC AGE
THE LORDS HOUSE ESTABLISHED
TEXT: Isa. 2:1-4
1
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2
And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of Jehovahs house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
3
And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.
4
And he will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
QUERIES
a.
When are the latter days?
b.
Who are the people of Isa. 2:3?
c.
When will the cessation of war take place?
PARAPHRASE
And this is the message to Isaiah from the Lord concerning Judah and Jerusalem. In the closing days of the Old Testament era the faithful people of Gods remnant will grow into a great and spectacular kingdom into which people from all the nations and races on the earth will come for membership. They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, into this universal kingdom, saying, Let us join with this faithful remnant and learn of the One True God of Israel; He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths. Out of this Heavenly Community shall go forth the revealed will and word of God. And God, Himself, through His word will arbitrate between citizens of this new kingdom. Its citizens shall be people of peace and love and they will not fight against one another any more. All their activities and attributes will be directed toward fruitful and productive ends.
COMMENTS
Isa. 2:1-2 THE TIME: In the latter days of Judah and Jerusalem as the exclusive covenant people of God. Latter days does not refer to the end of time or the Second Advent of Christ or the so-called millenium. The N.T. definitely and clearly applies the phrase latter days to that period of time which began to run its course with the first advent of Christ (Cf. Act. 2:17 with Joe. 2:28; Heb. 1:2; Jas. 5:3; 1Pe. 1:5; 1Pe. 1:20; 2Pe. 3:3 and 1Jn. 2:18). Literally the phrase is, the last parts of the days, and means, the end of the ages (Cf. 1Co. 10:11). So the Lords house is to be established in its glorified and pre-eminent state in the last parts of the days of the Jewish Dispensation. In these last days of Judah, Herod the Great was King and he was the first foreigner ever to be King over Judah. This is a fulfillment of Gen. 49:10, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until Shiloh (Christ) come; and unto Him shall the obedience of the people be. It is not the present upon which the eyes of the Israelites are to be directed, but a time which is the end or goal of the contemporary course of events, when the Messiah will have come and the breach which sin had introduced between man and God will be healed (Cf. our comments in Daniel, College Press, chapter 9). The figure of Zion being exalted above the hills is significant. At the time when Isaiah spoke, the very reverse was the casemany other hills were higher than Zion (Cf. Psa. 68:16). The Temple in Isaiahs day was situated on Zion, but the false gods had their mountains as well: the Captiol, Olympus, Albordash, Meru, and Zaphon. But Zion, which, in Isaiahs day and up to Christ, was comparatively insignificant will one day surpass all others. Even Sinai, the mount of law, will recede into the background, for the new covenant is superior to the old. This is the meaning of Heb. 12:18-24 where Sinai represents the old covenant and Zion represents the new covenant, or the church. See also Dan. 2:35; Dan. 2:44; Jer. 31:12 a; Jer. 51:44.
Isa. 2:2 THE SCOPE: All peoples! No longer exclusively to the Jews. A constant accession of converts streaming, (flowing) from all parts of the world upward to Gods house. This high and pre-eminent mount (Zionthe church) is to serve as a unifying force for the whole world. It is to be a reversal of the dispersion (Babel). (Cf. Mat. 8:10-11; Luk. 13:29; Joh. 10:16; Act. 13:44-47, etc.).
Isa. 2:3 THE NATURE: Enlightment! The law here is not the law of Moses for that went forth from Sinai. It is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It is the perfect law of liberty. It is the word of the Lord that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in Christs name beginning from Jerusalem (Cf. Luk. 24:47). It will be missionary and evangelistic! Many people will go and say, Come ye . . . No national or racial boundaries. It will be didactic and doctrinal. Those who come to it will necessarily be taught His way. As a consequence of being taught, men will want to walk in Gods way. True doctrine places within ones heart the desire to walk in the law of God. Truth leads to godliness, and when one has been truly instructed, he will want to do Gods will. One must be instructed first before he can walk in Gods way. Doctrine and ethics must go hand in hand. There can be no right obedience nor any right worship, until first one has learned of God (Cf. Heb. 8:8-13; Act. 20:32; Tit. 2:11-15; Joh. 6:44-46). It is through the church that the manifold wisdom of God is to be declared (Eph. 3:10). The churchs work is to produce a ministry for evangelizing and edifying (Eph. 4:11-16). Gods Word is the only source and foundation of truth. Those who preach must preach the Word! This passage teaches that what unbelievers need above all else is teaching which is indoctrination. The missionary and evangelistic activity of the church must be doctrinal in character. The great need of the world is the preaching of revealed absolutes (restrictive and difficult though it may be). The world does not need speculative and theoretical philosophies and theologies of men. There will be some who will reject His Way (Cf. Jer. 6:16-21; Isa. 42:24; Act. 9:2, etc.).
Isa. 2:4 THE RESULTS: Peace! is the result of this establishing of the Lords house. When men are brought into the kingdom of God, the church, they are brought to peacepeace with God and peace with their fellow citizens of the kingdom (Cf. Eph. 2:11-22; Col. 3:15; Joh. 14:27; Joh. 16:33; Act. 10:36; Rom. 14:17, etc.). It does not necessarily demand the cessation of all literal human or physical war for the fulfillment of this prophecy. There will be war between human beings as long as there are unregenerate people. But if all men knew and did the will of God war would cease. Peace comes through knowing and doing (voluntarily, not by force) the will of God. There can not be war in the kingdom of God, the church, for it is recreated in the image of God and knows no man anymore after a human (unregenerate) point of view (Cf. 2Co. 5:16-21). If the peace of Christ rules in our hearts (Col. 3:15), this will arbitrate any disagreement we might have as Christians (Cf. 1Co. 5:9 to 1Co. 6:8). The Christian, if possible, so far as it depends upon him, must live peaceably with all (Rom. 12:18). When the exalted, universal house of the Lord is established and people are so taught His Way that they want to walk in it, the result will be peace and productivity. The instruments of their bodies, the talents they have, formerly used for unrighteousness, will now be beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks and used for productive profitable ends (glorifying God and serving others) (Cf. Rom. 6:12-23).
QUIZ
1.
When (latter days) is the Lords house to be established?
2.
Cite two scriptures to show that Mount Zion is typical or prophetic of the church in the N.T.
3.
Who is to be included in the exalted house of the Lord?
4.
What will be the essential nature of the establishing of this house?
5.
What will be the result of it?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
II.
(1) The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.On the relation of this chapter to Isaiah 1, see Introduction. The moral and social state described in it points to an earlier date than the reformation of Hezekiah. The sins of the people are more flagrant; but there is not as yet with them the added guilt of a formal and ceremonial worship. The character of the king in Isa. 3:12 corresponds with that of Ahaz. The influence of the Philistines, traceable in Isa. 2:6, is probably connected with their invasion of Judah in that reign (2Ch. 28:18). The mention of ships of Tarshish in Isa. 2:16 points to a time when the commerce of the Red Sea (1Ki. 9:26; 1Ki. 22:48) was still in the hands of Judah, and prior, therefore, to the capture of Elath by Rezin, king of Syria (2Ki. 16:6). We are able, therefore, with hardly the shadow of uncertainty, to fix the date of the whole section as belonging to the early years of the reign of Ahaz, with, perhaps, a backward glance at evils which belonged also to the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham. The title of the superscription unites in an exceptional form the two ideas of the prophet and of the seer. What follows is the word of Isaiah, but it is a word that he has seen.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
A MESSIANIC OUTLOOK, Isa 2:1-5.
Here commences a prophetic section, which ends, perhaps, with chapter 4, though some are of the opinion that chapter 5, and others still that chapter 6, should be included. From the character of its contents, the message seems properly to include only chapters 2-4. Its date is unknown. Its early place in the collection of Isaiah’s prophecies is inexplicable, if it be not of King Uzziah’s time, and one of Isaiah’s earliest writings.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. The word Though seen in spiritual vision, “the word,” here, is spoken of as something actually existing. It was a message, a speech, to Judah and Jerusalem. See 1Sa 3:1 and Jer 18:18 as to how the terms “word” and “vision” are used in the sense of prophecy.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 2:2-4 is in fact repeated with minor variations in Mic 4:1-3. It is quite probable that Micah received the words from the master.
Analysis of Isa 2:1-5.
a The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem (Isa 2:1).
b And it will come about in the latter days, that the mountain of Yahweh’s house, will be established in the top of the mountains, and will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will flow to it (Isa 2:2).
c And many nations will go and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths (Isa 2:3 a).
c For out of Zion will go forth the instruction, and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem, and He will judge between the nations, and will reprove many peoples (Isa 2:3 b).
b And they will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more (Isa 2:4).
a O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of Yahweh (Isa 2:5).
Note that in ‘a’ we have the word which Isaiah ‘sees’ concerning ‘Judah and Jerusalem’ and in the parallel the call for ‘the house of Jacob’ to walk in Yahweh’s light (which Isaiah has seen). In ‘b’ Yahweh’s Dwellingplace is exalted that the nations might flow to it, and in the parallel nation no longer lifts up sword against nation. In ‘c’ many nations seek to Yahweh to learn His ways and walk in His paths (what Israel are singularly failing to do), and in the parallel, the word goes forth from Jerusalem and He judges between the nations.
But we may also see progression, as Yahweh is exalted before the nations, who flow towards His Dwellingplace in order that they might learn from Him, and the result is that His word goes forth from Jerusalem so that He rules over the nations and universal peace prevails.
Isa 2:1
‘The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.’
This heading suggests that at least some of Isaiah’s prophecies were already in writing prior to their being brought together. It may cover the whole section to Isa 4:6 or even to Isa 5:30. As Isaiah believed that what he spoke was directly from God we would expect him to put it into writing. He considered that what he had to present was an enduring message from God, and the recording of it in writing would serve to confirm this fact.
The Glorious Vision ( Isa 2:2-4 ).
Isa 2:2
‘And it will come about in the latter days,
That the mountain of Yahweh’s house,
Will be established in the top of the mountains,
And will be exalted above the hills,
And all nations will flow to it.’
‘In the latter days’ signifies a long distance forward, and an undefined period, referring to the days when things will begin to come to their consummation. The prophets never doubted that in the end there would be a glorious future for the true remnant among the people of God. It had to be so for they knew that God would necessarily bring about His final purposes, and would become All in All.
In fact the New Testament writers all saw themselves as being in these ‘latter days’. They saw them as beginning with the coming of Jesus and the sending forth of the Holy Spirit, for they saw these latter days as being the days of the Messiah and the days of the infusion of the Spirit as constantly promised by God (Act 2:16-17; Act 2:36; compare 1Co 10:11; Heb 1:2; Heb 9:26 ; 1Pe 1:20; 1Pe 4:7; Jas 4:8; 2Pe 3:3 which in context he was applying to his own day although recognising it could last over a thousand years; 1Jn 2:18; Jud 1:18).
Note that the description here is not strictly geographical but exalted. The mountain site of Yahweh’s earthly dwelling is to be raised up and made pre-eminent. It will tower over the mountains. All other mountains and hills will be below it, and all the nations who seek Him will flow upwards to it. It should be noted that this is not the exaltation of Jerusalem, it is the exaltation of Yahweh in His house, and is deliberately paradoxical. And as though they were great rivers the nations will flow upwards, contrary to nature, drawn up to Him. Note how this latter promise demonstrates that not only the remnant of Israel, but also the remnant of all nations would seek Yahweh.
The vision should not be taken pedantically. This is no ordinary mountain, and no ordinary result. It is the mountain of Yahweh’s house that is lifted up, not Jerusalem. The other mountains and hills are clearly the lands of the nations, while the rivers flowing upwards represent their life-blood, their peoples (as the great rivers were the life-bloods of nations). The thought has in mind the responsive people of all nations who are thus connected with the river of life. So God’s house is exalted in order that all may see His glory and all may come to Him. We can appreciate from the picture why Paul spoke of ‘the Jerusalem which is above’ (Gal 4:26), and Hebrews speaks of ‘Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem’ (Heb 12:22). Our eyes should not be towards Jerusalem, but towards God’s heavenly Dwellingplace (1Ki 8:27).
But the nations saw their mountains as the homes of the gods. That is why worship took place at the high places which were originally on mountains, and many of their temples would be built on mountains, or, like the ziggurats, be designed to represent mountains. Thus the subservience of all the mountains to the mountain of Yahweh indicates the subservience of all their gods, and they are then left behind by the peoples in the upward flow of the responsive among those peoples to God. God is being raised above all that He might draw all to Him (compare Eph 1:19-23 where the idea is put in New Testament terms. See also Joh 12:32). The ‘mountain of Yahweh’ can be compared with the ‘heavenly places’ of Paul.
That Isaiah connects this with Jerusalem in some way the next verse makes clear, but Jerusalem is significantly not mentioned as being raised along with Yahweh’s house. Jerusalem is rather the place from which God’s dwellingplace is raised up and from which the testimony will then go out, a testimony which will point to the exalting of the house of Yahweh, which has been raised above all things, and from there they will take Yahweh’s instruction to the world. Jesus may well have had Isa 2:2 in mind when He spoke of the Temple of His body, which after three days would be raised up (Joh 2:19; Joh 2:21).
Note the careful wording. The instruction of Yahweh, and the word of Yahweh, go out from Zion/Jerusalem, but the message itself points to the exalted house of Yahweh on the mountain of Yahweh, raised above all mountains and hills, with the nations flowing to Him and His mountain, not to Jerusalem as such, (although closely connected in Isaiah’s mind with Jerusalem) that He may teach them His ways.
Ezekiel in chapter 40 onwards expanded this vision. He described the heavenly temple coming down on ‘a very high mountain’ some distance away from Jerusalem in ‘the holy portion’ away from the city (Eze 45:1-6). For to him Jerusalem had been defiled and was no longer fit to be seen as the place where Yahweh dwelt. And he sees the rivers flowing out from the temple to bring life to the world (Ezekiel 47). None of these descriptions must be pressed too literally. They were speaking of God’s final triumphal activity without trying to define it too closely. It was in the end beyond their (and our) understanding. God was finally to be sought in a place exalted beyond and above the earthly Jerusalem. ‘The hour comes when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father — for the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for such does the Father seek to be His worshippers. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth’ (Joh 4:19-23).
Isa 2:3-4
‘And many nations will go and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh,
To the house of the God of Jacob.
And he will teach us of his ways,
And we will walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion will go forth the instruction,
And the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem,
And he will judge between the nations,
And will reprove many peoples,
And they will beat their swords into ploughshares,
And their spears into pruninghooks.
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
Nor will they learn war any more.’
It is now emphasised that many nations will then seek to Yahweh. But it is to His ways and His paths that they will seek, and they will go to the exalted mountain on which is the house of Yahweh. They are not said to be strictly seeking to Jerusalem. They are seeking to a higher than Jerusalem, they are seeking to the exalted Lord.
On the other hand they do recognise quite specifically that they are seeking to ‘the God of Jacob’. They recognise that their blessing must come to them through the God of the fathers, the God of Israel, through the Abrahamic covenant as confirmed to Jacob (Gen 12:3 as confirmed to Jacob in Isa 28:14), Who has been highly exalted. Thus those blessings must therefore first come to them through God’s chosen people, His nation of priests (Exo 19:6), the people of the God of Jacob, and that is why Zion/Jerusalem is now described as the place from which that truth will go out to the world.
This idealised vision may well have been in Jesus’ mind when He informed the woman of Samaria that salvation was of the Jews (the house of Jacob), but that in the future worship even the mountain of Jerusalem would be replaced (Joh 4:19-23).
Such a reaching out with God’s instruction did begin when the witness of Israel, dispersed by exile, resulted in many Gentiles turning to the God of Israel, and centuries later His truth would even more powerfully stream out into the world through the followers of Jesus, reaching out from Jerusalem to the ends of the world (Act 1:8), as they pointed to their exalted Lord. So Jerusalem would indeed be the starting point of the blessing, proclaiming the exalted Lord Who was Himself raised over the nations.
And all this is finally to result in God’s universal rule. He will act as Judge over the nations, the One Who is the final Authority and Determiner of justice, and as the Arbiter who advises and reproves. The result will be universal peace and total cessation of war. Weapons will be turned into instruments for good, and used to provide for the needs of the world. Heaven has no need of weapons. All will be under Him. His everlasting kingdom of peace will finally have come.
The Davidic king is here kept in the background. But his presence would be assumed to be in Jerusalem, and is later exemplified in Isa 9:6-7. It would be assumed that it would be through him as Yahweh’s anointed that Yahweh would dispense his justice and reproof. This is made abundantly clear elsewhere (e.g. 2Sa 7:8-16; Psalms 2; Psa 89:19-37).
So the whole picture is that of the presentation of the coming of the future everlasting kingdom in terms that Isaiah and the people could to some extent understand and appreciate, symbolised in the exalting of the mountain of the house of Yahweh above all mountains, with Jerusalem, at least initially, its connecting point to earth. The extravagant language and conceptions should warn us against taking it too literally, for it is ‘the mountain of Yahweh’s house’ that is being exalted rather than Jerusalem. Taking it too literally would later lead to the idea of the inviolability of the temple on the Temple Mount, which led Israel astray, and many later superstitions about Jerusalem, which even affect people today.
To us the vision goes even deeper. For we are aware that the mountain of Yahweh’s house has been exalted even to heaven, and that the word of Yahweh continues to go out from that heavenly temple, of which we are a part, through His people, and that one day in the new heaven and the new earth (see Isa 66:22) all will come under His sway and wars and fightings will be no more.
NOTE. There are some who rather prosaically simply equate ‘mountain of Yahweh’s house’ and ‘mountain of Yahweh’ with ‘Zion’ and ‘Jerusalem’ as though Isaiah was just using four expressions for the same place. But as we have suggested above we do not consider this permissible in this case. For ‘the mountain of Yahweh’s house’ is here mentioned as synonymous with ‘the mountain of Yahweh’ and ‘the house of the God of Jacob’, with stress on its being uniquely exalted. The stress is on Yahweh, His mountain and His house, seen as one together, being raised and exalted, not on the mountain as simply a geographical place connected with a city, but as raised so as to connect with Heaven. It is an exalted vision. Compare, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite’ (Isa 57:15). Furthermore if we do simply insist on equating such terms we would actually make it impossible for Isaiah to express anything distinctive, whereas he is clearly striving to do precisely that here. Prophetic declarations go beyond the pedantic. Compare Isa 66:1 and the vision of Solomon in 1Ki 8:27.
The ancient name of Zion, could be applied to both the holy mount and to Jerusalem, and often was, and Jerusalem was undoubtedly closely associated with Mount Zion, and Mount Zion with Jerusalem (Isa 10:12; Isa 24:23). But this was because His people in their great city, which was built on more than one mountain, were seen as closely connected with Yahweh in His holy mountain. ‘Mount Zion’ in its use is not the equivalent of Zion. ‘Zion’ had ceased to be simply the name of one particular mountain, and had become rather the name of a place connected with that mountain, and indeed came also to mean the people when in a far land (Zec 2:7). But ‘Mount Zion’ was especially the place where God had His earthly dwellingplace (and in Heb 12:22 had become heavenly). It was ‘the city’ to which Abraham looked (Heb 11:10; Heb 11:16).
So in Isaiah 2 it is the mountain as related to Yahweh, ‘the place where Yahweh dwells’ (see Isa 8:18; Psa 74:2), that is being exalted, not the city of Jerusalem, for although they were seen as closely associated they were not synonymous. It was the error of seeing them as one that resulted in the false doctrine of the inviolability of Jerusalem which was so solidly refuted by Nebuchadnezzar (and later by Titus) in practical fashion.
Indeed ‘Mount Zion’ became as much an idea as a place, as the New Testament makes even clearer (Heb 12:22; Rev 14:1). Even the Psalmist could say that it could not be moved but abode for ever (Psa 125:1). Israel knew full well that no temple and no mountain could contain Yahweh of hosts. Solomon stated quite baldly, ‘Will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, how much less this house that I have built’ (1Ki 8:27 compare Isa 66:1). So as a concept it was in Jerusalem and yet not in Jerusalem. It was the place of contact between earth and heaven. See Isa 66:1.
‘Mount Zion’ is the place where God will manifest Himself because it is both His heavenly and His earthly dwellingplace (Isa 4:5), and is described as ‘the place where Yahweh dwells’ (Isa 8:18). It was His earthly dwellingplace because the temple was on Mount Zion, but when it is so used it is not just being used as the equivalent of Jerusalem. It is being so used because of the presence of the temple, which was seen as representing a greater Dwellingplace, and a greater Mount Zion (consider Mic 4:7; 1Ki 8:27). In the same way here in Isaiah it is Yahweh’s house that is being exalted not the city. There are no grounds for simply equating ‘the mountain of Yahweh’s house’ with ‘Zion’ and ‘Jerusalem’ when used as here (although it is possibly done in Psa 48:2, but then the emphasis is on it as the city of the Great King). It is to miss the way that those such as Isaiah thought. Ezekiel would take it one step further. He removed the mountain of Yahweh’s house from Jerusalem altogether (Eze 45:1-8). End of Note.
The Appeal To Respond ( Isa 2:5 ).
Isa 2:5
‘O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of Yahweh.’
This parallels the ‘come’ of the nations (Isa 2:3). If the nations are to ‘come’ to be blessed by the God of Jacob, then the house of Jacob must first ‘come’ to walk in His light. This is the first imperative. They must let the light of His instruction shine on them (Isa 8:20; Psa 43:3; Psa 119:105) so that they might then themselves be a light to the nations (Isa 9:2; Isa 49:6; Isa 58:8; Isa 60:1-3). Indeed to walk in the light of Yahweh is to walk, not only in the light of His instruction, but in the presence of the One Who is the glorious and all prevailing light (Psa 27:1) from whom His own may receive inner strength (Psa 27:1). So Isaiah pleads with his people to respond fully to Yahweh so that together with him they might fulfil their divinely appointed function as a holy priesthood to the nations, and be the source of His Instruction flowing out to the world.
Notice his use of ‘us’. Ever aware of his own sinfulness (Isa 6:5), but also conscious of God’s mercy in forgiveness, he longs that they may join with him in his walk with Yahweh and in bringing Yahweh to the nations.
This call also comes to us to walk in the light of Christ (1Jn 1:7), asking that His light may shine on us daily, revealing the hidden things, so that we may bring them to Him for cleansing and forgiveness and walk in newness of life. We are to walk as children of light (Eph 4:17; Eph 5:8)
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
A Prophecy of the Millennial Reign of Christ Isa 2:1-4 describes the Millennial Reign of Christ on earth. Isaiah the prophet will refer to this period of history on a number of occasions in the book of Isaiah. Since this book places emphasis upon the role of Christ Jesus in the nation of Israel’s ultimate redemption, the prophet takes them to the time of their complete redemption when Jesus Christ shall deliver this nation from its enemies at the final, great battle that closes the seven-year Tribulation Period and ushers the world into the thousand-year Millennial Reign of Christ Jesus on earth.
Isa 2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Isa 2:2-4
Isa 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
Isa 2:3 Isa 2:3
Isa 2:4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Isa 2:4
Isa 2:4 “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” – Comments – This thousand-year period called the Millennial Reign of Christ will be characterized by a time of peace on earth when there will be no war.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Prophecies Against Israel Isa 1:2 to Isa 12:6 contains a collection of prophecies against the nation of Israel. The phrase, “for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” is repeated five times within this passage of Scripture (Isa 5:25; Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21; Isa 10:4).
Also found within this first major section of Isaiah are three prophecies of the Messiah’s birth. These prophecies reflect three characteristics of the Messiah. He will be born of a virgin as the Son of God dwelling with mankind (Isa 7:14-15). He will rule over Israel in the Davidic lineage (Isa 9:6-7). He will come from the seed of David and be anointed as was David (Isa 11:1-5).
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Gentiles Called to the Kingdom
v. 1. The word, v. 2. And it shall come to pass in the last days, v. 3. And many people shall go and say, v. 4. And He shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people, v. 5. O house of Jacob, v. 6. Therefore Thou hast forsaken Thy people, the house of Jacob, v. 7. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots, v. 8. their land also is full of idols, v. 9. and the mean man,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
SECTION II. DENUNCIATION OF GOD‘S JUDGMENTS UPON HIS PEOPLE (CH. 2-5.).
EXPOSITION
Isa 2:1
TITLE OF THE CHAPTER. It is generally allowed that the heading belongs, not to this chapter only, but to a section of the work, beginning here and ending at the close, either of Isa 4:1-6. or of Isa 5:1-30. It is probable that the section was originally published separately.
Isa 2:2-4
PROPHECY OF THE LAST DAYS. The resemblance of this prophecy to Mic 4:1-3 is so close as to necessitate the conclusion either that one of the two prophets copied from the other, or that both copied from an earlier document. The latter view, which is that taken by Rosenmller, Maurer, De Wette, Meier, and Mr. Cheyne, seems preferable.
Isa 2:2
In the last days; literally, in the sequel of the days; but generally used of a remote future (Gen 49:1; Num 24:14; Deu 4:30, etc.). The mountain of the Lord’s house; i.e. the Church, the true Zion, which is to be the antitype of the existing Zion, and is therefore given its material attributes. Spiritually, it would be a “mountain,” as “a city set on a hill,” which “could not be hid” (Mat 5:14); and again, as occupying a position from which it would command the whole earth. In the top of the mountains; rather, at the head of the mountains; i.e. with pre-eminence over them. The metaphor is drawn from the common physical fact of a high mountain range culminating in a single supreme eminence. So Mount Hermon towers above the rest of the Antilibanus, Demavend over Elburz, Rowandiz over Zagros. The “mountains” above which the true Zion shall tower are the kingdoms, or perhaps the religions, of the earth. All nations; literally, all the nations; i.e. “all the nations of the earth” (comp. Psa 72:11). Shall flow; or, stream. A constant accession of converts from all quarters is intended. These are represented as continually streaming upward into the holy mountain of God’s house.
Isa 2:3
Many people; rather, many peoples. Shall go; or, set forth. The prophet means to represent the nations as encouraging one another on the way. There is no jealousy among them, for the “mountain” can hold them all. He will teach us. The nations feel their ignorance of God, and their need of “teaching.” God alone can teach them concerning himself (Rom 11:33, Rom 11:34; 1Co 2:10, 1Co 2:11); and “he will teach” them, either directly, as the Incarnate Son, or indirectly through those whom he has appointed to be “teachers” (1Co 12:28). Of his ways; i.e. “some of his ways,” not “all of them;” for at present “we know in part” only (1Co 13:9), and the greater portion of his ways are “past finding out” (Rom 11:33). The “ways” here spoken of are, no doubt, rules for the conduct of life, which are practically inexhaustible. God, however, will teach every man, who honestly seeks to learn, enough to enable him to “walk in his paths.” Out of Zion shall go forth the Law; rather, instruction, or teaching. The word (torah) is without the article. The instruction intended is that of the Church of God.
Isa 2:4
He shall judge among the nations. This is clearly not yet fulfilled. How God shall ultimately “judge among the nations,” or rather “between nation and nation,” is a mystery which only the future can reveal. It has been supposed that “by his providential retributions he will decide those international questions out of which war ordinarily springs” (Kay). But it would seem to be at least as likely that he will bring the nations to such a pitch of wisdom and moderation, that they will voluntarily discard war, and agree to decide any disputes that arise by means of arbiters. The arbiter would then, like other judges, represent God, and “by him decree justice” (Pro 8:15). Shall rebuke. Rosenmller translates, “Arbiter pacts sit;” Cheyne, “shall arbitrate.” Here again, as in Isa 2:3, “people” should be “peoples.” They shall beat, etc. On a sudden call to war, nations “beat their ploughshares into swords, and their pruning-hooks into spears” (Joe 3:10). They will do the reverse “in the latter days,” when God shall have “made wars to cease” (Psa 46:9) and “speak peace unto the nations” (Zec 9:10).
Isa 2:5-11
THE CONTRAST OF THE PRESENT WITH THE FUTURE. Having shown to Israel the vision of a far-distant future, when holiness and peace would reign upon the earth, and “the mountain of the Lord’s house” would draw all men into it, the prophet returns to things as they arefirst exhorting Israel to “walk in the light of Jehovah’ (Isa 2:5), and then showing how far they have withdrawn from the light;
(1) by magical practices (Isa 2:6);
(2) by commercial greed (Isa 2:6, Isa 2:7);
(3) by ostentation and luxury (Isa 2:7);
(4) by idolatry (Isa 2:8).
Such being the case, punishment must comemean and great must be equally brought low (Isa 2:9)the people must fly to their cave-fastnesses (Isa 2:10), and hide themselves; they must be humiliated to the uttermost (Isa 2:11).
Isa 2:5
O house of Jacob. “House of Jacob” is the common expression in Isaiah, instead of “house of Israel” (see Isa 8:17; Isa 10:20; Isa 14:1; Isa 29:22; Isa 46:3; Isa 48:1; Isa 58:1). It has no particular force, merely signifying “Israelites.” Come ye, and let us walk. The same words as those of the “nations” in verse 3, “Come ye, and let us go up.” As the nations will invite each other “in the last days,” so the prophet now invites his countrymen to walk with God.
Isa 2:6
Therefore; rather, for. The prophet, in calling upon Israel to “walk in the light of the Lord,” implies that they are not so walking. He then proceeds to give the reasons of this. They are not, “for God has forsaken them, or, cast them off.” The first reason is because they be replenished from the east (Revised Version, “they be filled with customs from the east); i.e. they have adopted a number of Syrian, Assyrian, and Ammonite superstitions; e.g. high places, images, and “groves,” the burning of their children in honor of Moloch, the use of divination and enchantment, etc. (2Ki 15:4; 2Ki 16:3, 2Ki 16:4; 2Ki 17:10-12, 2Ki 17:16, 2Ki 17:17, etc.). Most of these practices reached the Israelites from Syria, though many had their origin either in Assyria or Babylonia. Soothsayers, like the Philistines. The “diviners” of the Philistines are mentioned in 1Sa 6:2. By the word here employed, it would seem that they foretold the future from observations on the clouds and the general appearance of the sky. During the reign of Uzziah, the Israelites had been brought into closer contact with the Philistines than usual, through his conquest of several of their cities (2Ch 26:6). They please themselves in the children of strangers; literally, strike hands with the children of strangers (comp. Job 27:23). This is thought to refer to striking hands upon a bargain (Cheyne), and to be an allusion to the commercial activity of the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham (2Ki 14:22; 2Ki 16:6). But perhaps it does not mean more than familiarity.
Isa 2:7
Full of silver and gold. The results of the commercial activitynot evil things in themselves, but probably acquired by sharp dealing, and leading to undue softness and luxury. The Law had given a warning against “greatly multiplying silver and gold” (Deu 17:17). For the fact of the vast abundance of the precious metals in Judaea at this time, see 2Ki 14:16; 2Ki 20:13; 2Ch 32:27; and compare Sennacherib’s inscription on the Taylor Cylinder. Full of horses chariots (comp. Mic 5:10). There is no reason to believe that the Jews or Israelites ever possessed (unless it were under Solomon) any considerable cavalry or chariot force. But from the time of David horses and chariots were imported for convenience and for show by the kings, the princes, and the nobles (see 2Sa 15:1; 1Ki 4:26; 1Ki 10:28, 1Ki 10:29; 1Ki 22:31; Ecc 10:7). Like the silver and the gold, they were signs of luxury and ostentation.
Isa 2:8
Full of idols. The historians declare that both Uzziah and Jotham maintained the worship of Jehovah and disallowed idolatry (2Ki 15:3, 2Ki 15:34; 2Ch 26:4; 2Ch 27:2), so that we must regard the idol-worship of the time as an irregular and private practice. (It is, perhaps, alluded to in 2Ch 27:2; and the fact of its prevalence is stated in Amo 2:1; Mic 5:13.) Perhaps Bishop Lowth is right in regarding it as mainly a continuation of the old private teraphim worship.
Isa 2:9
And the mean man boweth down, etc. So Ewald and Kay; but most other commentators render, “Therefore shall the mean man be bowed down, and the great man brought low, and thou shalt not [or, ‘canst not’] forgive them” (Rosenmller, Lowth, Gcsenius, Knobel, Cheyne). The transition from narrative to threatening comes best at the beginning of the verse.
Isa 2:10
Enter into the rock. The limestone rocks of Palestine are full of extensive caverns, to which the Israelites often betook themselves in times of danger (see Jdg 6:2; 1Sa 13:6; 1Sa 22:1, etc.). The prophet exhorts them to flee thither now, but without stating what exactly is the peril (comp. Isa 2:19, Isa 2:21). Hide thee in the dust. Not “the dust of humiliation” (Kay), but “the dust of the earth” (Gen 2:7), put here for the earth itself, as in Isa 2:19. For fear of the Lord; rather, from before the terror of Jehovah. Some awful manifestation of Jehovah’s power is intended, its nature being still kept back and shrouded in darkness.
Isa 2:11
The effect of the judgment which, in Isa 2:9, was said to be the humiliation of high and low alike, is here declared with special reference to the high-minded and proud, whom it will humble more than others. The Lord alone shall be exalted; like a lofty and strong tower (comp. Isa 12:4; Isa 33:5).
Isa 2:12-22
THE DESCRIPTION OF THE DAY OF THE LORD. The prophet, now, having announced that God is about to visit his people in anger (Isa 2:10, Isa 2:11), proceeds to describe in highly rhetorical language the visitation itself,
(1) as to its object, which is to bring down all that exalts itself against God (Isa 2:12);
(2) as to its scopeit is to be upon trees, mountains, hills, towers, walls, ships, pleasant pictures, idols (Isa 2:13-18);
(3) as to its practical effect, which will be to alarm and terrify, to make men fly and hide themselves, and to produce contempt of the idols in which they have so long trusted (Isa 2:19-21).
Isa 2:12
For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one; rather, For the Lord of hosts shall have a day upon everything. The passage is exegetical of “that day” in the preceding verse. A “day”or timeis certainly coming which shall be emphatically “the Lord’s”a day on which he will descend to judgment. Proud lofty lifted up (comp. Isa 2:11). “The ideas of eminence, pride, and opposition to God melt into each other in the Old Testament” (Cheyne). And he shall be brought low; rather, that it may be brought low (so Gesenius and Cheyne).
Isa 2:13
Upon all the cedars of Lebanon. It is usual to take this metaphorically; and no doubt men are often compared to trees in Scripture (Psa 1:3; Jer 17:8; Job 8:16, Job 8:17), and “cedars of Lebanon” especially are symbols of the great and proud ones (Eze 31:3). But it has been well observed that either all the details of the description in the text must be taken literally, or all of them metaphorically, and that the mention of such objects as “ships of Tarshish” and “pleasant pictures” pleads strongly for a literal interpretation. The day of the Lord was upon the cedars when Sennacherib “with chariots upon chariots came up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof” (Isa 37:24); and similar devastation accompanied, it is probable, the other invasions of the Assyrians. Upon all the oaks of Bashan. The “oaks of Bashan” are celebrated also by Ezekiel (Eze 27:6) and by Zechariah (Zec 11:2). It is quite likely that the Assyrians cut timber in Bashan, as they did in Lebanon and Amanus.
Isa 2:14
Mountains hills. It is Sennacherib’s boast that he “came up to the height of the mountains” (Isa 37:24).
Isa 2:15
Upon every high tower. Uzziah and. Jotham had, both of them, paid much attention to fortifications, and had especially “built towers,” both at Jerusalem and in other parts of Judaea (2Ch 26:9, 2Ch 26:10; 2Ch 27:4). Isaiah means to pour contempt on these indications of “trust in an arm of flesh,” and to say that they will be of no avail when the time of calamity arrives. Every fenced wall. “On the wall of Ophel” Jotham had “built much” (2Ch 27:3). Hosea (Hos 8:14) and Micah (Mic 4:11) also notice the trust of Judah in her fortresses, and threaten their destruction.
Isa 2:16
All the ships of Tarshish. “Ships of Tarshish” meant originally “ships built to sail to Tarshish;” but was used by the later writers for ships of a certain class or size (1Ki 22:48; Psa 48:7; Eze 27:25). Tarshish was Tartessus, in Spain, and voyages thither were regarded as long and dangerous (Herod; 1.163). Consequently, the ships which were built for the Tartessian trade were of unusual size and strength. Uzziah had “built [i.e. rebuilt] Elath,” in the eastern arm of the Red Sea, early in his reign (2Ki 14:22), and no doubt maintained a fleet there, as Jehoshaphat had done (1Ki 22:48). Elath remained in the possession of the Jews till the reign of Ahaz, when it was taken by Rezin, and restored to Edom (see ‘Speaker’s Commentary’ on 2Ki 16:6). Upon all pleasant pictures; Revised Version, all pleasant imagery. The exact word hero translated “pictures” does not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament; but a cognate word is not uncommon. From the passages in which this cognate word occurs (especially Le Isa 26:1; Num 33:52; Pro 25:11; Eze 8:12), it is concluded that works of art, of some sort or other, are intended. More than this can scarcely be determined. Dr. Kay thinks the term to include “sculptures and fresco-paintings.” Mr. Cheyne translates “all delightful works of imagery.” The sentiment is that the judgment of God will fall on the most valued contents of palaces and grand houses, no less than upon the forests and the mountains, the fortified places, and the national navy. All wilt be involved in one sweeping destruction.
Isa 2:17
The loftiness of man. This verse interrupts the sequence of the thoughts somewhat awkwardly. It is a sort of refrain (see Isa 2:11; and for the use of refrains in Hebrew poetry, see Exo 15:1, Exo 15:21; Psalm evil. 8, 15, 21, 31), and perhaps comes in for rhythmical reasons, to the detriment of the sense.
Isa 2:18
And the idols he shall utterly abolish; rather, and the idols shall utterly pass away. While the visitation shall fall only partially on the other objects precious to Israelthe cedars, the oaks, the terraced mountains and hills, the strongholds, the ships, and the works of artthe idols shall be wholly swept away by it. It is impossible to say what visitation exactly was in the prophet’s mind; but if we may suppose that the Babylonian captivity came within the range of the prophetic vision, we must pronounce the prediction to have received a very remarkable fulfillment in this matter, since that calamity did put an entire end to the idolatry of the nation.
Isa 2:19
They shall go into the holes of the rooks, etc.. On the abundant caves of Palestine, see note on the former passage. To shake terribly the earth; literally, to affright the earth. It is not said in what way he will affright it. The cognate Arabic verb has the meaning “to shake;” but it is not clear that the Hebrew one has ever this sense.
Isa 2:20
In that day a man shall cast, etc, When the idols disappoint their worship-pets, and prove to be unable to save them, they are treated with scorn and ignominy. The African beats his fetish on such occasions. The Israelites would fling theirs to the moles and the bats. Idols of silver idols of gold (comp. Exo 20:23; Psa 115:4 : Psa 135:15; Isa 30:22; Isa 31:7; Hos 8:4; Hos 13:2). A passage of Habakkuk (Hab 2:19) shows that sometimes the main bulk of the idol was of stone, which was overlaid with a coating of one or other of the two precious metals; but it would seem that ordinarily the entire image was either of gold or silver (comp. Exo 32:4, Exo 32:24; 1Ki 12:28). No doubt it was thought that the god worshipped through the image was more honored, and therefore better pleased, by the more costly material. Which they made each one for himself; rather, which they (i.e. the manufacturers) have made for him. Idol-making was a trade, as we see by the Acts of the Apostles (Act 19:24-27). To the moles; literally, to the dig-holes. The metaphor must not be pressed. They would throw the idols into holes and corners, pits and caverns, where moles and bats might be expected to be the only visitants. Some idea of the blindness implied in any regard for idols may have prompted the imagery.
Isa 2:21
To go into; or, as they go into; i.e. “as they make their escape, they shall fling the idols away.” The clefts of the rocks (comp. Exo 33:22, the only other passage of Scripture where the word occurs). The tops of the ragged rocks; rather, the rents, or crevices. The idea of hiding themselves from the awful majesty of God is kept up throughout (cf. Isa 2:10 and Isa 2:19; and see also Luk 23:30).
Isa 2:22
Cease ye from man. This verse is regarded by many as a late marginal note, which has accidentally crept into the text (Diestel, Studer, Cheyne). It is omitted in the Septuagint, and interrupts the sequence of Isa 3:1-26. on Isa 2:1-22. somewhat awkwardly. If retained, it must be regarded as an appeal to Israel on the part of the prophet to give up their trust in man, whence had flowed all their other errors. Whose breath is in his nostrils; i.e. “whose life is a mere breath; who, if he ceases to breathe, ceases to live.” For wherein is he to be accounted of? or, for of what account is he? Surely, of no account at all.
HOMILETICS
Isa 2:1-4
Hope and fear to be both called out as motives by the preacher.
Already in the first chapter Isaiah has appealed to both motives, and while for the most part denouncing Israel’s sins, and declaring their coming punishment, has taken care to intersperse among these warnings announcements of a more cheerful character (see particularly verses 9, 19, and 25-27). Now, being about to devote almost two whole chapters to denunciations, he prefaces them with one of the most glorious and joy-inspiring of all his prophecies, thus setting forth a light which not all the gloom of the succeeding sections can wholly obscure, but which casts some portion of its radiance into their darkest places. The reasons for thus intermingling light and darkness, joy and sorrow, warning and promise, would seem to be
I. ON ACCOUNT OF THE INTERMIXTURE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN THE WORLD. Tares are always mingled with the good seed. In no nation, in no state of society, is the whole mass utterly corrupt. There is always “a remnant” (Isa 1:9). Nay, morein no man is the character wholly evil, absolutely without redeeming points, altogether wicked. The preacher has to take care lest he “break the bruised reed,” or” quench the smoking flax” (Mat 12:20). He must tenderly nurture what there is of good in a corrupt society or character; and this can only be done by comforting announcements, cheerful views, words of’ promise. On the other hand, never is there any state of society or human character without some defilement of evil, some darker shades, some blemishes (to say the least) and imperfections. Never, therefore, can the preacher dispense with the motive of fear. Never must he give himself up wholly to “speaking smooth things,” else will he assuredly “prophesy deceits” (Isa 30:10).
II. ON ACCOUNT OF THE DOUBLE DANGER OF DESPAIR ON THE ONE HAND, AND OVER–CONFIDENCE ON THE OTHER. If all that is preached is denunciation of sin, declaration of God’s wrath against sinners, and threatenings of his vengeance, the soul may be made sad whom God has not made sadthe timid may be scared, and the penitent “swallowed up with overmuch sorrow” (2Co 2:7). Nay, absolute despair may be produced, and the soul lost which we sought merely to rouse. To prevent such a result, it is needful constantly to set forth, not only God’s judgments, but his mercies; not only his wrath, but his loving-kindness. On the other hand, if these alone are set forth, if his justice is ignored, if the severity of his judgments upon sinners is concealed, a feeling of overconfidence is apt to be produced, and then carelessness and general laxity of life follow. The wise preacher will steer clear of both dangers, will avoid alike Scylla and Charybdis. He will make his appeal in all cases to both motives, but will dwell upon the one or upon the other, as the circumstances of the case require. If he has reason to suspect over-confidence, which is the more usual peril, he will enlarge on the “terrors of the Lord;” if, on the contrary, he has to deal with tender consciences and souls too timid and distrustful, he will choose topics of a cheerful character, and make his comfortable assurances preponderate over his warnings.
Isa 2:6-8
National judgments the result of national sins.
God’s dealings with Israel are to be viewed as a pattern of his dealings with nations generally. He has not two standards of right and wrong, or two rules of action under like circumstances. He is “no respecter of persons.” As he dealt with his own peculiar people, so will he deal, so has he always dealt, with the other nations of the world.
I. EVERY NATION HAS ITS PROBATION. God proved Israel during the space of above seven hundred years by the laws which he gave them, and the circumstances in which he caused them to be placed (Exo 15:25; Exo 16:4; Exo 20:20; Deu 8:2, Deu 8:16; Jdg 2:22; Jdg 3:1, Jdg 3:4, etc.). He chastened them by foreign enemies, comforted them by deliverances, warned them by his prophets, afflicted them by famine and pestilence, gave them “times of refreshing.” So long as there was any hope of their repentance and reformation, he bore with them, forgave their transgressions, prolonged their time of trial, “destroyed them not.” It was only after all the resources of his mercy had been exhausted, and there was “no remedy” left (2Ch 36:16), that the destruction fell, and the nation ceased to exist. And so it was with the other nations of the earth. God raised them up, set each a work to do, gave them laws, if not by revelation, at any rate through their conscience, and proceeded to “prove them,” whether they would work his will or no. Each fell in its turn because it rebelled against God, and persisted in its rebellion, until God could suffer it no more. (See the example of Assyria in Isa 10:5-19.)
II. THE PROBATION IS CARRIED ON PARTLY BY THE BESTOWAL OF FAVORS. Peace, prosperity, good seasons and rich harvests, a succession of capable monarchs or ministers, and, again, success in war, victories, conquests, and the wealth that sometimes flows in through conquests, are, all of them, blessings which God bestows on nations with the object of trying them. Will they be thankful? Will they make a good use of the favors granted them? Will they maintain their equanimity, and not, like Assyria, be unduly puffed up? The discipline of prosperity is exceedingly trying; and under it nations almost invariably wax wanton and proud. Israel was thus tried in the times of David and Solomon, and also under Uzziah and Jotham (2Ch 26:6-16; 2Ch 27:3-6). Assyria underwent the probation for many centuries, from the time of the king contemporary with Ahab to the great blow received under Sennacherib. Egypt in early days, and Rome in later ones, had even longer periods of unmixed prosperity, and became proportionally “lifted up.” It is rarely, indeed, that we find any nation improve under this kind of probation. Almost invariably there is a rapid change for the worse.
III. THE PROBATION IS FURTHER CARRIED ON BY THE INFLICTION OF JUDGMENTS. God has many arrows in his quiver, many plagues whereby he can punish nations, as he showed in Egypt (Exodus 7-12.); but three of these stand out from the rest as the especial instruments of his wraththe sword, famine, and pestilence. (See 2Sa 24:13; 1Ch 21:12; Eze 34:17. In Eze 14:12-21, “four sore judgments” are mentioned; but “the noisome beast” is clearly not on a par with the other three.) On the employment of the sword to chastise Israel, see Exo 22:24; Le Exo 26:17-33; Jdg 3:8, Jdg 3:12; Jdg 4:2; Jdg 6:1; Jdg 13:1; 2Ki 17:20; 2Ch 36:17; of famine, see Le 2Ch 26:19, 2Ch 26:20, 26-29; Deu 28:22-24; 1Ki 18:1-18; Joe 1:4-20; Joe 2:3-11; of pestilence, see Num 16:46-49; 2Sa 24:15; Eze 14:19; Eze 38:22. Of these three, famine and pestilence are the minor scourges, and are employed to warn, to terrify, to arouse; war has sometimes the same object, but is especially used to destroy. War destroyed Assyria (Nah 3:2-15), Babylon (Jer 1:2 -37; Jer 2:1 -58; Dan 5:30, Dan 5:31), Media, Egypt (ibid; Eze 3:11-13), Persia (Dan 8:3-7, Dan 8:20, Dan 8:21), Greece, Rome. War is still God’s last, most terrible scourge, and will remain such until the happy time, described by Isaiah in verses 24, arrives.
Isa 2:12-22
The terrors of the day of the Lord.
Every visitation of man by God is typical of his coming to judgment. “That day” is, in its deepest and truest sense, the day whereon Christ shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. Of “that day and that hour knoweth no man” (Mat 24:36); and the terror is increased by the mystery. The prophet sees God descend to judge Israel. The particular features are local; but through them may be discerned without much difficulty the characteristics which are recurrent, and which belong especially to the last and great day, viz.
I. ABASEMENT OF THE PROUD. Earthly distinctions come to naught when the earth itself comes to an end. Rank, titles, dignities, fail. The “mean man” and the “great man” (Isa 2:9), the highest and the lowest in earthly rank, are upon a par, when all have to appear before their Judge. And spiritual pride is equally brought low. None but must then feel himself a miserable sinner, a suppliant for mercy at God’s feet, with hope only through the merits and intercession of the incarnate Son. “The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isa 2:17).
II. DESTRUCTION OF THE GRANDEST OF HUMAN WORKS. Towers, walls, palaces, are shattered and overturned at the great seasons of national judgments, and will fall with a crash everywhere at the final judgment-day. The great navies of the world will perish in the “fervent heat;” the works of art, the “pleasant pictures,” and all the “delightful works of imagery,” will shrivel like parchment scrolls. The accumulated civilization of millennia will be brought to naught. Egypt’s pyramids and temples, Persia’s palaces, Greece’s lovely fades, Rome’s amphitheatres, Christendom’s magnificent cathedrals,all will totter to their base and be overthrown. Nothing will stand that human skill, contrivance, energy, has constructed; all will disappear, and
“Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind.”
III. DESTRUCTION OF GRAND OBJECTS IN NATURE. The taint of man’s sin has passed upon nature itself. Pride and vanity have employed natural products for self-glorification; the precious metals have been prostituted to sinful uses; selfishness has turned natural beauties into private property, and either made a gain of them, or jealously secluded them from the intrusion of ordinary humanity. Therefore Nature, as she now is, has become unfit for the habitation of man in his regenerate condition; and “the first earth” has to “pass away,” and to be succeeded by the “new heaven and new earth” of the Apocalyptic vision (Rev 21:1). What the exact amount of change will be, we do not know. Many features of the existing earth may remainpure snowy summits that the foot of man has never trod; blue glacier caves that have escaped his prying eyes; deep forest glades preserved from the desecration of his presence by thorny jungle or impenetrable wealth of undergrowth; but much of that with which man is most familiar will disappearperhaps all that could recall acts or thoughts of sinand the “new heaven and new earth,” that God will create, will to such an extent supersede the old, that “the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa 65:17).
IV. GENERAL ALARM, ESPECIALLY OF THE SINNER AND THE WORLDLY. They of Israel fled into “the holes of the rocks, and the caves of the earth, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty” (Isa 2:19). At the last day, “men shall say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us” (Luk 23:30);” Hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev 6:16). The brightness of his presence will be intolerable to those who have “loved darkness rather than light; ‘and they will desire, at any rate, to flee from it. Alas! flight will be impossible, concealment will be impossible; no rocks will offer hiding-places to the ungodly from the presence of God. One only refuge is possible that to that men must have fled before, with the heartfelt, earnest cry-
“Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!”
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Isa 2:1-4
The golden age.
I. THE BLESSED OR GOLDEN AGE A SUBJECT OF EARLY PROPHECY. It is believed that we have in these verses a very ancient oracle, first delivered by the earlier prophet Joel (see Joe 3:10), and from him repeated by Isaiah and Micah (Mic 4:1-4). An eternal hopefulness lived in the heart of the great prophets, like a light shining in a dark place, amidst all the scenes of national sin and depression. What has been said of true poetry is to be said of prophecyit is the “light that never shone on sea or shore; the inspiration and the poet’s dream.”
II. A REVIVAL OF RELIGION WILL USHER IN THE GOLDEN AGE. The mountains were earliest seats of Divine worship, both amongst Jews and Gentiles. One of the seats of the great god of the Greeks, Mount Lycaeos in Arcadia, commanded, Pausanias tells us, a view over nearly the whole Peloponnese. Zion was a small and lowly mount, but it is to become a peak that shall overtop all mountains, the “joy of the whole earth” (Psa 48:2), unrivalled in the majesty of its Divine associations (Psa 68:16). The Gentiles will make pilgrimages to this holy mountain. All this poetically describes the commanding influence of true religion.
1. The revival of religion means the revival of morality. When the conscience is really awakened, the inquiry will ever beWhat must we do? What are the ways and paths of God? What are the principles of a true, a just, and a blessed life?
2. It means social unity. In the vision the Gentiles are seen converging with the Jews to one pointto Zion. The more deep religion is, the more do men feel that truth is but one, thought one, spiritual worship one. The love of God solves all differences in itself.
3. True religion is a self-diffusive power. It goes forth like light, like heat, like a fame and rumor insensibly stealing through the air.
III. JUSTICE AND PEACE WILL BE THE EFFECTS OF TRUE RELIGION. We can clearly see that it is so from the course of history. With the progress of Christianity, the administration of justice within the sphere of each nation has become milder, because more thoughtful, more respectful of the value of the individual life. Not only so, the idea of international justice has gained ground. Whatever a certain school of Politicians may say, conscience does gain ground in the dealings of nation with nation. Wrong cannot be done to the weak without censure. Nations as well as individuals are more alive to the voice of public opinion, and more sensible of shame. In our own time, “justice” has again and again been the watchword of our politics, and has gained attention and overcome the clamors of the bellicose and the sneers of the cynical. Let us-be thankful for these things. Best of all, peace and its occupations replace war and its waste, as true religion prevails. In this beautiful picture, or slight sketch of a picture, we see the soldier going back to his fields, that he may turn the murderous steel into the hoe, the share, the pruning-knife, while the arsenals and military schools are closed (see the touch added by Mic 4:4; cf. Psa 46:9; Hos 2:20; Zec 9:10). It is the picture of an ideal and a future, not yet nor soon perhaps to be converted into an actual present, except in the delightful world of holy dreams which makes the best of our life. But for every one who works and lives in the true Christian spirit, the picture ever more nearly tends to coincide with the reality.
IV. REFLECTIONS OF THIS PROPHECY AMONG THE GENTILES. Doubtless a large collection might be made of passages of similar scope from the lore of other nations. Best known are those from the Roman poets. Virgil, like Joel (Joe 3:10), reverses the imagery. When right and wrong are confused, wars prevail and all manner of crimes. The plough receives no honor; the fields run to weeds, because the farmers have gone to serve as soldiers, and the curved sickles are turned into the rigid sword (‘Georg.,’ 1.506, sqq.). So Ovid: in time of war the sword is apter than the plough; the toiling ox gives way to the war-horse, while hoes and rakes are turned into javelins (‘Fast.,’ 1.697, sqq.). He further sketches the picture of peace bringing back the ox to the yoke, and the seed to the ploughed land. For “Peace nourishes Ceres, and Ceres is the foster-child of Peace.” We must reserve the further pictures of the perfection of the golden age in the Gentile poets until we come to Isa 11:1-16. In their way they, too, recognized that so happy a state of things could only be brought about by religionby the returning of men to obedience to Divine laws.
V. MODERN LESSONS. Let us “come and walk in the light of the Eternal.” In that light the hideousness of war and of the national discords, which lead to it, are clearly seen. No sound understanding can ever look upon war as other than an occasional and dread necessity. Preaching against war may do a certain good. But practically to walk in the light and lead others to it is better. All sides of the subject need to be better understood by the popular mind. The most serious fallacies prevail. Were the energies now employed in preparing for and carrying on war devoted to exploring, breaking up, and cultivating new regions, how truly blessed the result! In fighting with the stubbornness of nature man may find an outlet for all his pugnacious energy. The poets should sanctify their art to glorifying the ideals of peace rather than those of war. None can read these lines without being enkindled
“Ah, when shall all men’s good
Be each man’s rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?”
(Tennyson.)
And let every earnest toiler in whatever sphere for the good of man, for the glory of God, take these words to heart
“Unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors.”
J.
Isa 2:5-10
Purgation by judgment.
The blessed age cannot yet come in. If we suppose the prophet to have been reading the previous oracle as a sabbath lesson out of the elder prophet Joel’s scroll, he adds the exhortation, “Let us walk in the light of Jehovah!” Then a sudden pause. For he calls to mind the present corrupt condition of the nation. They cannot pass over to that new and happy condition of things as they now are. Peace can only be the fruit of righteousness. God cannot impart blessings for which the heart makes no room.
I. THE REASONS OF DIVINE REJECTION. The nation’s practices and fashions are inconsistent with the religion of Jehovah.
1. Wizardry, magic, soothsaying, and augury prevail. These are distinctly heathen, Philistine, practices. The Law repudiated every kind of magic (Le 19:26; Exo 22:17). Such arts are described under various names in Deu 18:10, Deu 18:11. The principle was in every case the samethe attempt to gratify human curiosity and desire by unlawful means. Modern “spiritualism” springs from the same root. The path of true science is above-ground and full of light; that of false science is subterranean and dark. The methods of sound knowledge may be explained to all. The worker of good comes to the light, and hates occult procedure which can give no account of itself. The magical spirit still works against true Christianity, which is the “light of the Eternal.” Christian ministers become magicians if they teach that changes can be wrought or blessings secured by the mere administration of sacraments; or by the mere repetition of a formula, such as “I do believe, I will believe;” or by the artificial putting on of a particular frame of mind. Obedience, not the mimicry of it, purity, not the representation of it, is required by God.
2. Ill-gotten wealth and luxury. The people were immoderately money-loving. Like Tyre, they heaped up silver like dust, and gold like the mire of the streets (Zec 9:3).
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”
The excess of accumulation ever does mean the waste of manhood. A nation is only healthy when the vigor of its masculine intellect goes to promote the ulterior ends of existence. Those ends are spiritual. Wealth should be prized for the sake of leisure, and leisure for the sake of culture. When leisure hangs heavy on the business man’s hands, it is a sign that he has been overtrained in one direction. ‘Tis a sad failure to be found fit only for grinding at the money-making mill. Such a man cannot enjoy wealth when he has got it. We need a larger conception of the true conduct of life. Men often lose more morally in their rest-time than they can recover in their worktime. No unjust trading can produce real prosperity. England has gained by every act of righteous policy, such as the abolition of the corn-laws, the slave-trade. Whatever is gain to the health of the national conscience is permanent. Every just act is a tonic to the soul.
3. They are full of the materials for war, Their reliance is on horses and chariots. When a nation places confidence on physical force only, it is another symptom of moral enervation. How often has this been seen in history! The very existence of a great armed force is a constant provocative to war. It breeds a martial imagination and a bellicose spirit. National jealousies are roused, and the slightest occasion may set a continent aflame. The people must learn that Jehovah delights not in the legs of men, i.e. in serried battalions, and that in proportion as they lean on armies they are faithless to God. They must learn to say, “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy” (Hos 14:3).
4. They are full of idols. This is perhaps the worst feature of their state. The prohibition of idols is grounded in the nature of our thought. The idol defines and narrows what ought to be left indefinable. The Phoenician and other idols introduced into Israel brought down the Divine to the forms and dimensions of the human being, and all human passions the most sensuous could be projected upon them. And when man sees only his idealized self before him in the sculptor’s work, he falls to self-adoration. It was quite otherwise with the grand music and religious poetry of the prophets and psalmists. Lofty poetic images by their very vagueness and suggestiveness lead the mind to the truth beyond and behind them. High music and poesy we ever need in worship; but too definite forms fetter the flight of the devout imagination. In general idolatry means self-love, and must ever be antagonistic to pure religion. “Thus man lowers himself, becomes unworthy to appear before Jehovah, and belong to his people.” And judgment is inevitable; there can be no escape from it now!
II. TERROR AT THE APPROACH OF THE JUDGE. “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, fleeing before Jehovah’s terror, and the splendor of his majesty.” The soul living in falsehood as its element shrinks away from the coming truth which must annihilate it. Men’s fears represent to them at last their follies and their sins.
“Like bats and vermin hurrying from the sudden light.
Our sordid vices far from God would take their flight.”
The eyes that were not cast down in prayer, the mien of profane impudence that laughed at Heaven, are now shriveled, prone in the dust now before the lonely sublimity of the eternal Holiness. Those who made naught of God must learn that naught can exist which does not exist in God.
“At last we hear a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, Is there any hope?
To which an answer peals from that high land,
But in a tongue no man can understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn,
God makes himself an awful rose of dawn.”
Isa 2:12-22
The day of judgment.
Here follows a grand picture, in which a few simple thoughts are set.
I. THE DAY OF JEHOVAH. This stands for any and every epoch of clearer light which reveals the relative worth of things. False estimates of life and its objects have become by custom fixed. The imagination has been under a delusion. A false idea of greatness and goodness has become so fixed that nothing but a revolution will subvert it. The criticism of words may be defied; but the criticism of facts, of results,against this there is no appeal. There is no reversal of the judgment of events. A great day of judgment was, for example, the French Revolution of a century ago. The falsehood of generations was then expiated in blood. Social institutions which were bad, inhuman, yet which those who had grown up in them regarded as impossible to alter, were effaced in that terrible outpouring of the wrath of God. The sense amidst great wrong that the judgment of God cannot long be delayed, is expressed in the common saying, “Things must take a turn before long.” In the life of the individual, every stopping-point or turning-point at which a false way of life terminates, may be viewed as a day of judgment and a day of Jehovah.
II. THE DAY BRINGS WITH IT A SHOCK TO HUMAN IMAGINATION. The prophet piles up images to represent the reversal of all human ideals of greatness and loftiness. The gigantic trees of Lebanon and Bashan, the mountains and hills, the towers and the high ramparts, the tall ships sailing Tarshish-wards (Psa 48:8), the turrets of villas and houses of pleasure, draw down upon them the violence of the storm. The vast and lofty in nature and in works of art are not of more value in the eyes of God than the small and lowly. They are hints of the greatness of the spirit, and if we give such objects an independent greatness, we are suffering from an illusion. The greatness and the beauty are in the seeing mind. There is not so much to be seen of the work of God in a mountain as in a moth. “Life apparent in the smallest midge is marvelous beyond dead Atlas’ self.” The palaces, the streets of a great city, are signs of the human soul and its greatness, but not the truest signs. It is a common error to look for the tokens of a people’s greatness in their buildings and mechanical achievements. But from what source does material creation and production come? That is the ultimate question. Our works of art are works of the flesh and of pride, or works of the spirit wrought in humility and the love of truth. A few such works in plastic stuff of stone, or on canvas, or in poetic words, endure through all change. That which is untrue must fall sooner or later beneath the criticism of God and be exposed. And in the downfall of human works the eternal God is again manifested in his supreme greatness and glory. It is our own false imaginations which hide him from us.
III. THE ABANDONMENT OF THE IDOLS. For the idols cannot help their worshippers, who must run to hide themselves. Yet at first they cling to them. But soon in alarm they cast them away into any corner, any refuse-heap, any filthy haunt of bats and moles. “To cast to the bats” is as proverbial an expression in the East for throwing clean away as rejected rubbish, as “throwing to the dogs” with us. There comes a time when men will be willing to get rid of their most precious objects so that they may but save themselves. A secret terror haunts the false conscience, which in moments of clear revelation of truth rises to an acme and becomes a panic. The true heart longs for more of God’s light, the false can only exist behind an artificial veil or screen. In every time larger light is appearing, truths for the conduct of life are coming into currency; in short, the Divine Critic of our life is making his censure felt. Alas for those who rush into any cave at hand, plunge into obscurantism rather than face the worst, which thus faced will prove the best!
IV. THE MORAL. “Cease ye from man.” If in any such day of revelation all the proud ideals of human society may be discovered false, and cast aside as worthless; if the time of revelation shows that we have been resting upon rotten shams; if we have an uneasy consciousness that it is always so;how vain is all confidence in human wit and work! The bitter words seem to cast contempt upon every species of beast and satisfaction. A poet of our time has written a great work to show that “our human speech is naught, our human testimony false, our fame and human estimation words and wind” (Browning,’ Ring and Book’). But how can we cease from man? We can only know the true and the eternal through some form of human experience. The answer isMan merely as man, an independent fact, is naught; he and all his pass away. In living for himself as if there were no truth, no good, beyond, he becomes a lie. If we see man only we see the false; if God working in and through man and his history, we find the true in the false. Working through the false shows of sense, we may reach the spirit of things, the mind of God. We leave our hold on the fugitive human fact, false if we try to stereotype it, that we may plant our foot on the constant. The Divine
“Truth is forced
To manifest itself through falsehood; whence divorced
By the excepted eye, at the rare season, for
The happy moment, truth instructs us to abhor
The false, and prize the true, obtainable thereby.”
J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM
Isa 2:3
Real religious revival
“Many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.” Here is the tide of national feeling, no longer on the ebb, but on the flow. God is “to teach them his ways, and they are to walk in his paths;” for they have found out that pleasure gained by sin is peace bartered. Elevation of the truest kind is to be theirs now. This is the image of their uplifted state. They are to go up to the mountain of the Lord’s housethe consecrated height of holiness and peace.
I. THERE IS SPONTANEITY OF LIFE. “Come, let us go.” It is no mere fashion, or custom, or compulsion of obedience. Life always says, “Come.” I read delight here. For what we enjoy we invite others to see. When we ascend to the mountain-top, and see the winding river, like a streak of silver, and the village-dotted plains, we cry “Come!” to others, that they too may delight in the loveliness of the scene. So an earnest Christian not only says “Come!” because of the urgency of the salvation, but also because of the beauty and blessedness of religion. “Oh taste and see,” he says, “that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”
II. THERE IS SACRED FELLOWSHIP. “Let us go up.” For religion is intensified in its experiences by mutual faith and joy. The interaction of mind on mind and heart upon heart in a great congregation is wonderful. “Let us go up.” And beautiful were those spectacles in Hebrew history, when the pilgrims went to tabernacle or temple. “Thither the tribes go up,” The festal caravans met each other from distant parts, as they merged at last into one common road to time-beloved Jerusalem. At the Feasts of Pentecost and Passover, as in the days of our Savior, the interest felt in these upgoings to Jerusalem was both human and Divine. Old friends met again, whilst youths and maidens set eyes for the first time on the city and temple of their fathers. On their way they sang the songs of Zion, till in noblest worship the gathered tribes lifted up their praise to the Lord God of Israel.
III. THERE IS SUBLIME PROPHECY. “Many shall go,” Yes, and in these Christian days, Greek and Jew, bond and flee, have been united in one common song of deliverance. Missionary societies have founded Churches and schools on well-nigh every shore. “Many shall corns.” Verily, unto Christ shall the gathering of the people be. “All nations shall call him blessed.” How verified the words have been! “For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”W.M.S.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Isa 2:1-5
The promised future: a missionary sermon.
I. THAT DIVINE TRUTH WILL KNOW A TIME OF GLORIOUS ELEVATION. The “last days” (Isa 2:2) may be distant days, may be “afar off” still, but they are coming; we are steadily advancing to them. The “mountain of the Lord’s house” may be low down today, but it will rise; it may be but as a hill of sacred truth obscured among the mountains of error. But God’s high purpose shall surely be fulfilled in time; the day will dawn when they who gaze upon the spiritual scenery of the world will see Zion lifting up its head far and high above all those little hills into which the proud peaks of falsehood will have diminished. There is a power that can raise the hills and that can “thresh the mountains” (Isa 41:15).
II. THAT ITS POWER SHALL HAVE THE WIDEST POSSIBLE EXTENSION. “All nations shall flow unto it.” The river of human thought, faith, hope, shall set in a strong current to this high mountain. Divine truth shall not only gain a formal triumph over the idolatries, superstitions, infidelities of the world, but human hearts everywhere will rejoice in its salvation.
III. THAT ONE SIGN OF ITS EXALTATION AND EXTENSION WILL BE A PREVALENT SPIRIT OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. (Isa 2:3.) Men will be convinced of the hollowness of their old faiths; of the unsatisfying character of their present pleasures; of the insufficiency of the light in which they have been walking to lead them into wisdom and blessedness. And they will turn to the one and only source of illumination and joy; they will say, “Let us go up,” etc. (Isa 2:3). The hungry heart will cry out for the Bread of life; the thirsting soul will pant for the living streams. When men have roundand are they not finding more and more largely?that the errors into which they have wandered are but ashes in their mouth, they will seek and they will accept the bountiful provision which awaits them in the “Father’s house,” in the gospel of the grace of God.
IV. THAT ONE RESULT OF IT WILL BE THE PREVALENCE OF THE SPIRIT AND OF THE INSTITUTIONS OF PEACE. (Isa 2:4.) The love of war, the institutions of war, the readiness to have recourse to war, the pride and glory in military achievements which even Christian nations are not ashamed to own,this will disappear as the will of God takes its due, its exalted place among mankind. The sword will give place to the ploughshare, not only in the use of the nation’s metal, but in the honor and estimation of the people’s mind. And instead of a country wasting its strength and lavishing its energy in the cultivation of the science and in the construction of the enginery of war, it will devote its mental power to the acquisition of those arts which heal and bless and raise.
V. THAT ONE CONTRIBUTION TO ITS COMING WILL BE FOUND IN OUR OWN FAITHFULNESS. (Isa 2:5.) If we would be sure of the dawn of this blessed future, let us take our part, however humble it may be, in the work of enlightenment; let us walk in the light of the Lord. It is the critical and the censorious whose faith fails them; it is they who have no bright visions of a coming day of glory; they are only conscious of the clouds, and see no light in the far horizon. But those who study the will of God as revealed in his Word, who make haste to keep his commandments, who live the Master’s life, and illustrate his Word by deeds of helpfulness and love,it is they who have the assurance in their hearts that “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established, “that the day will come when truth will be crowned, and “universal peace” shall
“Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro’ all the circle of the golden year.”
For it is
“Unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors.”
Isa 2:5
The wisdom of walking in the light.
The prophet inserts a parenthesis which evidently expresses the deepest and strongest feelings of his heart. He is oppressed with a sense of the folly of those who deliberately go astray in the darkness, when they might walk on in the light of Divine truth toward the goal of human blessedness; hence his fervent exclamation, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us,” etc.
I. THE TRUTH OF GOD THE LIGHT OF THE HUMAN SOUL. Light is “that which makes manifest” (see Eph 5:13). And as the sunshine makes clear to us our own persons, shows us all surrounding nature, and enables us to find our way to the objects of our desire, so the truth of God
(1) enlightens us as to our own selves, revealing our spiritual nature and our actual character;
(2) shows us the relation in which we stand to our fellows and to our Divine Maker, revealing to us human life and human destiny; and
(3) enables us to walk in the way of eternal life, becoming that which pleases God, and doing that which is right and good in his sight.
II. THE SUPREME WISDOM OF WALKING IN ITS LIGHT. Well may the man of God exclaim with even passionate earnestness, “Come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” For:
1. It is the one right course to take; any other must be one of error and of sin.
2. It is the path of progress, leading up to heights of strength, prosperity, sanctity.
3. It is the way to abiding joy; other paths, though they may open temptingly enough and may promise keen delights, will conduct ultimately to sorrow, shame, and death. This way, in which the light of the Lord leads us, may be entered upon with spiritual struggle (Luk 13:24), may be attended with much self-denial (Mat 16:24); but it is a path of purest and noblest joy (Rom 5:11; Php 3:1; Php 4:4; 1Pe 4:13), and it ends in everlasting glory (1Pe 1:3, 1Pe 1:4).C.
Isa 2:6-21
Retribution and its results.
In this noble prophetic passage, as charged with poetic grandeur as it is full of religious zeal, we have our thought directed to
I. Two HEINOUS SINS WHICH BELONG TO EVERY AGE AND CLASS. They are these:
1. Disobedience. The divination to which reference is made (Isa 2:6) is expressly prohibited in the Law (Deu 18:10-12); alliance with strangers (Isa 2:6) is also forbidden (Exo 34:12; Dent; Exo 7:2); the multiplication of silver and gold and of horses (Isa 2:7), however unobjectionable it may seem to us, was disallowed to the Hebrew nation (Deu 17:16, Deu 17:17). The Jews would be under strong temptation to disregard these prohibitions; many of the lower ambitions of our nature would urge them to transgression. But the clear, unmistakable “Law of the Lord” pronounced against these things. And as every fact, both of a brighter and a darker kind, admonished them “to obey the voice of the Lord their God,” they were “verily guilty” in their disobedience. God requires of men, of every age and land, that they should obey him. He will accept nothing of any kind as a substitute (1Sa 15:22; Mat 7:21). Our ignorance of his purpose in commanding is no excuse for our disregard of his will. How can such little children as we are expect to fathom the wisdom of the Infinite Father? When we set our poor judgment against his perfect knowledge, our mistaken wishes against his holy will, we fall into the most serious sin. Our obedience is to be intelligent and not mechanical, cheerful and not grudging, instant and not tardy, or it will not be obedience at all.
2. Idolatry. This sin, so grievous in the sight of God, is found in one of three forms.
(1) In its most gross and degrading form, as in Judaea at this period (verB. 8, 9), when both the “mean“ and the “great” prostrated themselves before the image made with hands; or
(2) in the less gross but still degrading form of superstition in “Christian” rites; or
(3) in that which constitutes its essence, viz. the giving to the creature the thought, the affection, the energy, which are due to the Creator. In this last form we are all under condemnation. We withhold from him whose we are and to whom we owe ourselves and all we have, the devotion and the tribute which we reserve for our neighbors or expend upon ourselves. This is essentially idolatrous.
II. DIVINE RETRIBUTION. Here are four features of it.
1. It begins in the withdrawal of Divine favor, “God forsakes his people” (Isa 2:6). He ceases to make the light of his countenance fall on them; their prosperity wanes, their joy diminishes, their power declines.
2. It may well be dreaded as certain to arrive in time. “Therefore thou wilt not forgive them” (Isa 2:9). God cannot and will not pardon the repentant, and those who are disobedient or idolatrous may count on the coming of his judgments as the most certain of all future things.
3. It is such that the boldest may well shrink from it. “Enter into the rock, and hide thee for fear of the Lord,” etc. (Isa 2:10, Isa 2:19).
(1) When God makes the sins of a man’s life to bring forth their natural and fitting fruits (intemperance, dissoluteness, dishonesty, etc; working themselves out in penury, disease, contempt, etc.);
(2) when God causes special enormities to be followed by extraordinary calamities; or
(3) when he makes the hardened sinner to confront death, judgment, and eternity;then does he come as One who is in “the glory of his majesty, shaking terribly the earth;” then does he manifest his will and his power in such wise that the boldest and most fearless may well shrink and shudder at his appearing. However valiant sin may show itself while the righteous Lord delays to speak and strike, there is an hour coming when it will “call to the rocks to hide it, and to the hills to cover it,” when it will tremble and cower at the touch of the hand of the Holy One.
4. It is that which nothing can escape.
(1) No man. “The day of the Lord every one that is proud,” etc. (Isa 2:12); not only the humble, but the haughty; not the defenseless only, but the strong and well fortified, even those who think themselves most secure, will feel the keen edge of the avenging sword (Isa 2:17).
(2) Nothing. The cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan, the mountains and the hills, the treasure-laden ships and the pleasant pictures and even the trusted idols,all shall feel the blow of the mighty hand; nothing too high or too strong to be beyond its reach (Isa 2:13-18).
III. THE ISSUE. The end of Divine judgment is:
1. The humiliation of that which is false and evil. The idols which had been so honored are to be cast to the moles and to the bats (Isa 2:20). When God appears in judgment there is a great reversal and overthrow. That which was first becomes last; that which was highest in esteem becomes the object of derision and contempt.
2. The exaltation of the Lord himself. “The Lord alone shall be exalted,” etc. (Isa 2:17). And, though we do not gain the thought from these verses, we may add:
3. The salvation of the penitent and the faithful. There is one Rock in which, if we seek its gracious shelter now, we shall then be able to hide, and in whose shadow we shall be safe;” for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”C.
Isa 2:22
Trusting in man.
I. OUR STRONG TEMPTATION. We are very strongly tempted to “put our trust in man,” to “make flesh our arm;” for:
1. We see signs of strength in man. And that which is visible has most influence on our human nature. “If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1Jn 4:20). In like manner we far more readily trust the man who is before us with visible signs of health, riches, power about him, than any unseen force which may really be more reliable.
2. Human affection invites trust in man. There are loving hearts around us, enclosing our spirits in the embrace of their affection; it is natural to us to respond to their kindness, and to offer them the full confidence of our souls. We love those who love us; and whom we love we trust.
3. Confidence is often directly offered to us and urged upon us. Those who wishperhaps for their own purposesto secure our confidence in them know how to employ successful arts to win our assurance. They virtually say to us, “Trust me, I will ensure your good, I will lead you in the path of honor, of enjoyment, of prosperity;” and it is all too likely that their blandishments or their importunity will prevail.
4. Trust in man is contagious. We find our fellows on every hand, in every circle, leaning the whole weight of their well-being upon the arm of men, confiding wholly in their friends and neighbors, risking everything on their integrity; and what others do we are tempted to do also. The frosts may have been very few and the ice may seem very thin, but many are skating on its surface, and we think that where they have gone we also may go with impunity.
II. OUR WISDOM IN ITS PRESENCE.
1. We should never trust man absolutely. We are to “cease from man;” he is “not to be accounted of” in such way as to be worthy of our implicit trust. Of this we may assure ourselves if we will remember:
(1) His liability to mistake. The cleverest, the most learned, the most thoughtful, the most esteemed, are wrong in some things, are often found wrong in great and grave things; there is no man whose judgment is always sound.
(2) His spiritual insecurity. The man who is held in highest regard may be overtaken by a storm of temptation in which even he will make shipwreck. Men have fallen on whose security their companions counted with unbounded certainty. Before the friend whom we honor above all others, there may prove to be a course which will end in spiritual declension, or even in moral degradation. The painful facts of life pierce our theories while they break our hearts.
(3) His physical fragility. “Man, whose breath is in his nostrils.” Hale, strong, capable of noble work to-day, he may be brought down to utter weakness and incapacity to-morrow; nay, before the sun goes down he may have drawn the last breath of life!
2. We should trust the only One who is trustworthyeven him who is the “Truth,” who is the “Holy One,” who is the “Immortal One.”C.
Isa 2:3
The attractions of the gospel Church.
The earthly Jerusalem, which was thought of as a mountain surrounded by mountains, but superior to them all, is in the prophet’s mind, and it gives form to his thought of the Gospel timesthe setting up of the Christian Church, and the planting of the Christian religion in the world. Christianity shall then be the “mountain of the Lord’s house,” or the “Lord’s mountain house,” exalted above all other religions, and made the rendezvous of all the spiritual seed of Abraham. “The prophet sees the Church permanently placed in a conspicuous position, so as to be a source of attraction to surrounding nations. To express this idea, he makes use of terms which are strictly applicable only to the local habitation of the Church under the old economy. Instead of saying, in modern phraseology, that the Church, as a society, shall become conspicuous and attract all nations, he represents the mountain upon which the temple stood as being raised and fixed above the other mountains, so as to be visible in all directions” (J. A. Alexander). T.K. Cheyne notices an “old belief in Eastern Asia that there was a mountain reaching from earth to heaven, on the summit of which was the dwelling of the gods. The prophet is, perhaps, alluding to this belief, which he recognizes as true in substance, though attached by the heathen to a wrong locality.” The text may be illustrated by the custom of the Israelites to journey from all parts of the country for the yearly feasts. Keeping the figure of the prophet, we observe
I. THE GOSPEL CHURCH IS LIKE A MOUNTAIN, Illustrate from the conspicuous position of Jerusalem, or of Safed. A mountain rises up out of the plain; so the gospel Church is right in the midst of the world and the people. A mountain towers up above the plain, within sight of all; and so the gospel Church is such a striking and impressive thing that all eyes must be turned to it. Men cannot be blind to it; men dare not ignore it. Like the mountain, it is an indestructible fact, of which men must take account. The buildings erected for its worship are the symbols of itself; in every village, town, and city, the church tower and cathedral spire rise above the buildings of the people, well in everybody’s sight. Show that however men may think to dispel the so-called myths that have gathered round the historic Christ, they must deal with this mountain-fact, the gospel Church exists; it must have had a source; it must have a mission at the heart of it. Surely it is the witness of the truth of Christ.
II. THE GOSPEL CHURCH IS FIGURED AS ON THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS, Other religions, other social and philanthropic schemes for the elevation of the race, may be figured as mountains. But let them all be gathered together, and it will be found that Christianity towers high above them all. Its origin, its character, its provisions, make it the most conspicuous, the most important of them all. Comparisons may be instituted
(1) with man-made religions, paganism, Buddhism, etc.; and
(2) with previously given Divine religions, such as patriarchism, Mosaism, etc. The points of superiority are such as these:
1. Revelation of God to man under the figure of Father.
2. Manifestation of God in the person of his Son as a fellow-man.
3. Redemption of man by the intervention of Divine love.
4. Perfect provision for the needs of man, as a spiritual being.
5. Adequate and final mastery of all man’s moral foes and evils.
Show that other religions touch some of man’s needs. Christianity is at the “top of the mountains,” because it reaches them all, and deals with them efficiently.
III. THE GOSPEL CHURCH ATTRACTING ALL NATIONS. They will be drawn, not forced into it. One shall tell another of it. One shall invite another to journey to it. They shall flow to it as streams flow to the sea. “There is an Eastern fable of a great mountain of lodestone, out in the middle of the sea, that attracted, to their destruction, all the ships that came near it. This mountain of the Lord’s house is a great spiritual magnet, and it draws souls, not to destruction, but to everlasting life” (Dr. Edmond). Illustrate
(1) from the various nations attracted by the preaching of the early Church;
(2) from the power of the preached gospel in various heathen lands now;
(3) from its proved fitness to meet the needs of all sinners and all sufferers. Jesus said, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.”R.T.
Isa 2:4
War no more.
It seems that the reign of Uzziah was famous for the invention of new weapons of war (2Ch 26:11-15). Isaiah, observing this, contrasts with it the good time coming, when righteousness rules the relations of kings and kingdoms; and when Messiah, the Prince of righteousness, and therefore Prince of peace, judges among the nations. If Christ really reigned, and held the allegiance of every man and of every nation, all disputes could be settled by arbitration; if each man, and each nation, only wants what is right and what is kind, there need be no more war. Matthew Henry well says, “The design and tendency of the gospel are to make peace and to slay all enmities. It has in it the most powerful obligations and inducements to peace, so that one might reasonably have expected it should have this effect; and it would have had it if it had not been for those lusts of men from which come wars and fightings.” Christianity has, in some measure, already triumphed over war and the war-spirit.
I. THE HORRORS OF WAR ARE RELIEVED. Certainly they are so far as concerns civilized and Christian nations. Compare ancient and modern warfare in respect
(1) of giving no quarter;
(2) of unbridled license on taking a city;
(3) of the treatment of captives;
(4) of provisions for the care of the wounded;
(5) of the respectful burial of the dead.
“So far as the teaching of Christ has influenced international polity and law, he has been the supreme Arbitrator of their disputes.” “It is undeniable that Christianity has greatly contributed to ameliorate the political condition of mankind, by diminishing the horrors of war, promoting mutual intercourse, and advancing the useful arts.”
II. THE IMPLEMENTS OF WAR ARE DEVOTED TO OTHER USES. The expression, “beat their swords into ploughshares,” is figurative, and what it represents is met by the fact that commerce and manufactures advance faster than the making of war-tools. Time was when men and energies were given to the manufacture of weapons and implements of war, and when kings lived to make war. That is all past and gone. Only a small fringe of human labor is related to war material; and kings have discovered that national prosperity and national peace go together hand in hand. Contrast the life in England under the Edwards, and under Victoria. “In such states of society as that among the Hebrews, the peasantry, when summoned to the field, are obliged to provide their own weapons. When, therefore, they were poor, and material for weapons was too expensive for their resources, it would be an obvious thought to turn the ploughshare, which was thin, long, and light for such an instrument, into a sword, which was short and thick as compared with our sword. When the war was over, the change might easily be made back again. A sword would, of course, with equal facility, be changed into a ploughshare. Pruning-hooks may include anything employed in reaping or mowing; such as a sickle or scythe, as well as the long knives used for trimming vines.” Show that commerce, knitting lands together by mutual interest, is a handmaid to Christianity in her work of peace.
III. THE WASTE OF TIME AND POWER IN LEARNING WAR ARE CHECKED, Illustrate from the formation of our volunteer army, the members of which give their best energies to peaceful pursuits, and only their leisure to learning the art of war. Note the growing feeling that the soldier-class is almost a useless class; that the money expended on them is a waste; and that the nation suffers by having so much of her young manhood idle, and getting into the moral mischiefs of the idle. The results we thus can recognize have been attained by the triumph of the great Christian principles, of peace, brotherhood, and care for others rather than for self. But we may not rest with any present attainments; we must witness and work for that glorious coming time, when the ideal king is to “judge among the nations,” and in reliance on his wisdom and equity, the nations will refer their disputes to his decision, instead of the arbitrament of war.R.T.
Isa 2:5
Walking in the light.
That is in the path of present duty on which the light of revelation shines. The text is part of a spirited address to the Jews to avail themselves of the privileges they had. The prospects of a glorious peace-time must not keep them from fixing their thoughts on their immediate and pressing duty. It is right for us to cheer our souls by the look away to rest and heaven; but we must not lose the present opportunity in idle dreamings. The real way to win the heavenly is to live in righteousness, in truth, and in charityto “walk in the light of the Lord.” We remark, in unfolding this “light” in which we are invited to walk, that
I. GOD GIVES LIGHT BY GIVING COMMANDMENTS. Illustrate from the great natural laws written in men’s consciences and hearts. The Decalogue was in existence as unwritten law before the finger of God traced it on the tablets. Also from the ten commandments, as elaborated by Moses, and made to cover all the minutest details of a Jew’s life and relations. And also from the commandments given by the Lord Jesus, and elaborated in detail by the apostles, so as to apply to all the circumstances and relations of the early Christians.
II. GOD GIVES LIGHT BY REVEALING PRINCIPLES. These underlay Mosaism, and were discovered by the more devout and thoughtful Jews. These were brought out to view by the later prophets. It is the great characteristic of Christianity that it is a religion of principles rather than of commands; and makes its appeal to the purposes and the motives rather than to the mere ordering of the conduct. The renewed man, in whom the Holy Ghost dwells, should rule life by the light of holy principles.
III. GOD GIVES LIGHT BY MANIFESTING HIMSELF. In the person of his Son, who is the “Light of the world;” “the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” God shows us his glory in the face of Jesus Christ; and to walk in obedience to Christ, in dependence upon Christ, in fellowship with Christ, and in full purpose to serve, honor, and glorify’ Christ, is the way to “walk in the light of the Lord.”R.T.
Isa 2:10, Isa 2:11
Shame for the sinner.
We can more easily bear suffering than shame. Man has great powers of physical endurance. But we dread shame as we dread nothing else. There was the keenest distress in that old and cruel way of treating some criminals. They were put in the pillory. They were lifted up on a stage in the market-place. A frame was fastened round the neck and wrists, which left the head and hands exposed. Crowds gathered below, and scorned the poor man, throwing at him all manner of vile things, and then raising the laugh at his soiled and bemired face. The shame of such a punishment must have been very hard to bear. The chapter before us intimates that this intenser kind of punishment, this shame and humiliation, awaits all who forsake or neglect the living God, and serve the idols of their own pleasure. The Law of God must indeed rise up to vindicate its claims and execute its sanctions; it must lift up its hand to smite. But there is something more solemn than that; the Law shall come to the sinner himself one day. It shall look upon him with its look of inward purity and outraged love; it shall be the look of his God. That will be a flash of the eternal light; it will reveal to him the blackness of his heart, and pride will be, once for all, crushed; vain confidences will drop out of his hands, and, putting those hands on his face, he will cry m his shame, “O rock, hide me from the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty.” The fear of coming shame ought to deter men from evil.
I. RIGHT AND WRONG ARE READILY CONFOUNDED IN THIS WORLD. “Woe unto those who call evil good, and good evil,” disturbing thus the foundations of morals, and confusing the testimony of men’s consciences. Evil and good are opposites, contradictories; they meet nowhere, they blend no how. Few men question the distinction between right and wrong, but many ask on what ground the distinction rests; and “Is it possible for us men clearly to recognize the distinction?” Are there no finer shades of circumstance which occasion difficulty and confusion? In this complicated state of society do we not need some very clear, sharp, precise test? And is there any such? There is. The right, the true, is everything with which we can associate the presence and inspection of God, without feeling either sense of unfitness or fear. In order to discover the contents and qualities of a substance, the chemist will add some testing fluid to it, and by the effect produced he learns the qualities. That we can do to test the rightness or wrongness of any act of life. Add the thought of God to it. But the fact stares us in the face that good and evil are now sadly confounded.
1. It is often so when the movements of life are made without befitting consideration. Into so many undertakings we are simply borne by the press of social customs, the example of our neighbors, or the influence of excitement; and we have actually stepped over the borderland of the right before we have quite realized our position.
2. It is often so because the false can put on such appearances as will suffice to deceive us. “Even Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”
3. And it is often so because the wrong bias of our souls even makes us willing to see fancied goodness in the false. So often the wrong offers a present gratification of passion, and so stills opposition and effects its evil design.
II. SOONER OR LATER THE FALSENESS OF THE FALSE, AND THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE TRUE, MUST BE MANIFESTED; and that manifestation must prove an overwhelming shame to all who have served the false. The time of the manifestation is called “the day of God.” In some sense the present is man’s day. His voice is loud now; his will is strong now; his pleasures abundant; and God seems to be still. Wrong riots, and God seems to hold aloof. Sin rules, and in forbearance God restrains himself. And yet the truth is that God’s day is an eternal now; it is always close at hand. It may be shown that God’s day comes
(1) in the time of our conversion;
(2) in the humbling of our first sight of the cross;
(3) in the time of the sinner’s remorse;
(4) in the time of national calamity;
(5) and in what is spoken of in Scripture as “the day of judgment.”
Men may do in this twilight time of earth, deceiving themselves, and being deceived, in this dim, uncertain light, this mingled shade and shine. If they want to do wrong, it is only to push it a little further into the shadow, and then they cannot well see what it is. But men would blush to do their wrongs in the full blaze of day. They will hide their heads in shame when God dispels the shadows, and makes the revealing light of his day rest on their lives.R.T.
Isa 2:12-17
The Lord’s day for the proud.
Any time of specific judgment or mercy is in the Scriptures called a “day of the Lord.” The day of the Lord has come for the antediluvian world, for Sodom, for the Canaanites, for Babylon, for Israel. It is ever coming to nations, in the corruption or the calamity that follow on national sin. It will come as long as the world endures; that is, so long as God needs, by external judgments, to mark the evil of sin. The sin of all others that calls for a “day of the Lord” is pride, self-confidence, rebellious self-assertion; and this was precisely the sin of the times in which Isaiah wrote. Man is made for God; he was ruined when he broke relations with God, and in self-will separated himself from God. And there is no hope of restoration until pride is humbled. Therefore for this humbling of self God pleads, and to secure this God sends judgments. Henderson says, “These verses contain a specification of several of the most distinguished objects of nature and art, in order, metaphorically, to represent the different persons or orders of men elevated by the dignity of orifice, or rendered notable by their riches, or the elegance and luxury of their establishments, whom the judgments of God would, in a more remarkable manner, hurl into ruin.” It has been also observed that the emphatic iteration of “lifted up” is noticeable as indicating that the prophet sees in that self-assertion the root-evil of his time, that which was most destructive of the fear of the Lord, and most surely brought down judgment on the offender.
I. ONE DAY GOD HUMBLES THE PROUD NATION. Illustrate from Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar exalted himself, and took all the glory to himself, and Belshazzar followed him in the same willfulness; but a day of darkness and terror came for Babylon, of which the handwriting on the wall gave awful warnings. Or take Jerusalem as representing the kingdom of Judah. Puffed up with self-confidence, willfully resisting the Divine lead, a day of vindication and judgment at last came; her enemies poured in like a flood; the holy city lay in ashes, and her people were either slain or captive. And it is not without good reason that we find modern illustration of God’s day for nations in Napoleonic France. Napoleon claiming both to “propose and dispose,” and overtaken by God’s avenging day at Moscow and Waterloo.
II. GOD‘S DAY HUMBLES THE PROUD INDIVIDUAL. That day comes in such forms as these.
1. A slip from integrity brings disgrace and ruin.
2. Masterfulness and arrogance bring hatred, which finds occasion to injure.
3. Riches take to themselves wings and flee away.
4. Mind becomes unsettled, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzar.
5. Sickness and bereavement come in his family. Sooner or later a day dawns in which the haughty, self-reliant, God-despising man is touched on his sorest, tenderest place. No man can ever be permitted to exalt himself against God and permanently prosper. Give instances from modern life of the downfall of pride, such as the closing years of Squire Beckford’s life.
III. GOD‘S HUMBLINGS, FOR NATIONS OR FOR MEN, MAY BE MELTINGS, OR THEY MAY HAVE TO BE CRUSHINGS. The result of them depends upon the way in which they are met and responded to. That which is designed to melt may harden; and a judgment that bruises only may be so abused, that it must be followed by a judgment that breaks. Israel would not be humbled by calamity after calamity graciously tempered, so it must be made overwhelming; and Samaria was taken, and the distinct life of Israel, as a nation, crushed out forever. It is a thought full of painful seriousness, that the quality and degree of our troubles depend on cur response to those God has sent, as chastenings, in earlier times. God’s hand may be heavy on us, because we have so long resisted his pleadings and his humblings. Judgment is his strange work, mercy is his delight; but if we resist him, further and heavier judgments are demanded by very “mercy.”R.T.
Isa 2:20
Man’s disgust at his idols.
In Isa 2:8 the prophet had observed that one characteristic of the times was prevailing idolatry. The men who had, in their self-will and pride, turned from the living God, had taken up with idols, deities of their own imagining, which answered to the devices and desires of their own hearts, and allowed them to keep their self-will even in their religion. Divinely revealed religion and man-made religions differ in thisthe first demands the surrender of self-will, the second finds expressions for, and strengthens by expression, man’s self-will. That is the real reason why men constantly fall into idolatry; it keeps them in the” self-sphere.” The prophet recognizes this by saying, “Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.” Then, when Jehovah arises to vindicate himself, man is humbled, and one sign of that humbling is sure to be, that his trust in his helpless, self-fashioned idols is broken. He finds out their uselessness when God’s testing day comes upon him, and in disgust he is ready to cast them to the “moles and to the bats,” creatures of the darkness. “God can make men sick of those idols that they have been most fond of, even the idols of silver, and the idols of gold, the most precious. The idolaters here throw away their idols because
(1) they are ashamed of them, and of their own folly in trusting to them, or
(2) because they are afraid of having them found in their possession when the judgments of God are abroad; as the thief throws away his stolen goods when he is searched for or pursued.” Idolatry is a delusion, and when that is suddenly dispelled, the idols will be “thrown away in haste, terror, shame, and desperate contempt by those who had worshipped them and trusted in them.” It should be kept in mind that the prophet’s words apply to the characteristic idolatries of civilized and modern, as well as of heathen and ancient, times. “Covetous men make silver and gold their idols.” Worldly men make pleasure or fame their idols. Parents make children their idols. All will be cast away when God arises to vindicate himself, and his sole claim to man’s trust and love and life. The immediate reference of the prophet probably is to the terrible earthquake that took place in Uzziah’s reign, and the fright which it occasioned.
I. IDOLATRY IS DELUSION. The calm onlooker sees that the description of idols given in Psa 115:1-18. is strictly and perfectly true. But the worshipper cannot see this. He believes his idols can really help him, and prays to them with passionate intensity. So the man whose idol is money is deluded. He thinks his money can help him in whatever circumstances he may be placed. But sickness comes, danger comes, plague comes, earthquake comes, shipwreck comes, fire comes, death comes, and it is quite plain that he was deluded. Money is a helpless idol; it cannot aid its votaries in God’s day. Point out that the root of the delusion is self-trust; a man wants to rely on something that he has, or that he has done, or that he has made. Blessed only is that man whose trust is in the Lord his God.
II. SOONER OR LATER THE DELUSION IS DISPELLED. Awakening days are sure to come for us all. The apostle teaches that all our trusts and all our works must be tried by fire;” the day shall declare them.” Illustrate the dispelling of the delusions of idolatry:
1. By the proved helplessness of the idols. Baal’s priests and worshippers had their eyes opened at Carmel, when there “was none that heard, nor any that answered.”
2. By advancing intelligence. Illustrate from the influence of education on the natives of India. Science and geography have made it impossible to believe in the legends of their gods. The delusion is in great measure expelled, but a first result is infidelity. Christianity alone can satisfactorily take the place of discarded idolatry.
3. By Divine judgments. Illustrate by such scenes as the earthquakes at Java and Ischia, or the destruction of Pompeii. Or take a visitation of cholera or plague in an idolatrous land. Churches, temples, idols, are forsaken; public helplessness and despair prepares the way for an extension of the evil. He only can be calm whose trust is in the living God. Impress by the contrast of the calmness and confidence of the pious psalmist (Psa 91:1-16.): “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my Refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”R.T.
Isa 2:22
The unreliableness of man.
Some think this verse should commence Isa 3:1-26.; but it is an exhortation naturally following on the humbling of all human pride and the destruction of all human glory. Man at his best estate is altogether vanity, therefore do not rely upon man. God is from everlasting to everlasting, therefore trust him. The counsel is elsewhere given in Scripture, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited’ (Jer 17:5, Jer 17:6). “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Quick-passing breath is the symbol of fleeting life (Gen 2:7; Gen 7:22); and the sentence of the text would better read, “Cease from man, in whose nostrils is a breath.” Trusting man was the sin of Isaiah’s age. Compare, later on, the afflicted nation Booking succor from Egypt rather than from God, and therefore coming under the prophet’s reproach. But man-trusting is a characteristic sin of our age; and we also need to learn that there is
I. NO TRUSTING IN MAN‘S POWER. That is within very narrow limits. “Let not your eye be to the power of man, for it is finite and limited, derived and depending; it is not from him your judgment proceeds. Let not him be your fear, let not him be your hope; but look up to the power of God, to which all the powers of men are subject and subordinate.” There is so much that man can do, we fail to realize, as we should, that he fails us just at the points of our extremest need, at the times when trouble overwhelms, heart fails, and fears are on every side. The man came to Christ with confidence that he could help, but doubting his will. We may seek our fellow-men in our troubles, confident of their good will, but full of fears as to their ability.
II. NO TRUSTING IN MAN‘S KNOWLEDGE. That, indeed, is vast and wonderful; and it is ever-increasing. And yet it is uncertain; we cannot make any foundations of it. What men call facts of knowledge are again and again disproved by the discovery of other facts; and what men call theories give place to new theories, as fresh minds work upon the old data, and gather new. Apart from revelation men have never found out reliable truth respecting God, man, sin, redemption, or the future.
III. NO TRUST IN MAN‘S CHARACTER. The most humiliating thing in human life is the failure from righteousness of those whom we have admired, trusted, and loved. Character, built on self, is uncertain, and in peril whenever temptation draws nigh. In middle life the honorable man so often fails from either
(1) drink,
(2) dishonesty, or
(3) sensuality,
that we have sometimes felt we could say, in a moment of excitement, as David did, “All men are liars.”
IV. NO TRUST IN MAN‘S EXAMPLE. It is always imperfect; it never can be an absolute model. Only one man set us an example that we should follow his steps, and he was the Divine man. We can follow no other man wholly. We can only follow one of our fellows so far as he follows Christ, and so we really only follow the Christ in him.
Where, then, are we to trust? “Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” “None of them that trust in him shall be desolate.”R.T.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Isa 2:1. The word that Isaiahsaw The construction of the second sermon, which is comprehended in this, the third and fourth chapters, is excellent. It was the design of the prophet, or of the holy Spirit speaking by the prophet, to convince the Jews in this discourse of their neglect and contempt of the divine law, and their holy religion; and of their base propensity to profane and foreign superstitions; as also of other vices gaining ground among the people, while the nation was yet in a flourishing state. To this purpose, while he seems in the beginning of his prophecy to treat of something quite different, he directs the exordium of his discourse with the greatest art to his intended subject. Rapt into a divine extacy, or vision, by the Spirit, a kind of school or celebrated academy is exhibited to him, over which Jehovah himself presided as ruler and teacher; which school is supposed to be founded on the top of mount Sion, raised aloft above all other mountains, that it might be seen, as it were, by the whole world. The prophet beholds many and great nations, after the fame of this seat of wisdom had spread itself every where, hastening to this celestial academy, and despising their ancient religions; drawing thence the precepts of salutary and evangelical doctrine, to be delivered at the end of time by the Messiah, the supreme teacher, and to be disseminated throughout the whole world; whose effect should be, the peace and concord of the people, and of those who embraced that faith. Thus far every thing was grateful, joyful, and consolatory to the minds of the pious; but observe how suddenly he changes his style: For when he seemed about to proceed in this pleasing and delightful discourse, and more fully to describe the felicity of those times, he stops, and, turning his discourse to God, by complaints of the unhappy state of the church in his time, he describes the manners of his contemporaries, who were cold to, and regardless of, the study of the divine law, and on the contrary warm and zealous for profane and foreign discipline; drawing, from this beautiful and consolatory vision, an argument to convince them of this and their other vices, and if possible to bring them back to duty from this comparison of future times. However, almost despairing of this, he places before their eyes that illustrious day of the divine judgment, when vengeance will be taken of the proud and idolatrous; repeating afterwards those crimes of theirs which would bring upon their nation the severity of divine wrath; yet softening the harshness of his discourse by a clear promise of the future Messiah, who should appear to the remains of them with all grace and an abundance of salutary blessings for the church. This discourse, besides the title and inscription, is threefold. Its first part comprehends the promise of some remarkable blessing in future times, when mount Sion, for the sake of true religion, shall be elevated far above all other places and schools in which religion is professed, together with the consequences of that benefit; from Isa 2:2-5. The second an exhortation of the people to repentance, with a bitter complaint of their corrupt state, and a denunciation of the divine judgments impending; from Isa 2:2 to chap. Isa 4:2. The third describes the flourishing state of the remainder of the Jewish people; which, under the care and the shade of the Branch of Jehovah, the true Messiah, should rejoice in all the benefits of divine grace and true consolation, Isa 2:2 to the end. This prophecy, it is most probable, was delivered before the time of Ahaz, under Jotham; or, what is more likely, in the most flourishing state of the Jewish nation under Uzziah. It is thus to be literally applied; but, no doubt has a farther spiritual and mystical interpretation. Vitringa.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
ISRAEL OF THE PRESENT TIME IN THE LIGHT OF ITS FINAL GLORY
A.The Superscription
Isa 2:1
1The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
The formula the word which saw, is found only here. It does not occur again either in Isaiah or in any other prophet. The form of expression , beside this place, is only found in Jeremiah, where, however, it is regularly followed by .Concerning in this connection comp. Isa 1:1.
The expression concerning Judah and Jerusalem connects Isa 1:1 with Isa 2:1, because it occurs in no other superscription. The likeness that exists between Isa 1:1 and Isa 2:1 in reference to the first half, is completed by this similarity of sound in the second half, where we would not omit to point out a second time that the difference between Isa 2:1 and Isa 1:1 in expression quite corresponds to the difference of the position of either chapter. Now as the expression concerning Judah and Jerusalem, Isa 2:1, helps connect with Isa 1:1, so it does in like fashion with the following chapters ii.v. For, as was remarked Isa 1:1, it is a fact not to be overlooked that the expression Judah and Jerusalem occurs relatively the oftenest in these chapters. It occurs Isa 3:1; Isa 3:8, and Isa 5:3, whereas in all the rest of the book of Isaiah, it occurs only three times, viz., Isa 22:21; Isa 36:7; Isa 44:26.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
We have in this chapter, strong, though distant views given of the coming of Christ. In the prospect, the Lord is set forth as both glorious and solemn to the people.
Isa 2:1
The man of God, takes a similar text to what he had used in his former sermon, with only this difference, that what he had termed a vision in the last discourse, be calls the word in the present; but the audience are the same, Judah and Jerusalem, the church of God, is the congregation.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Spiritual Transformation
Isa 2:4
Wherever Jesus reigns, this is one of the fruits of His sovereignty. The sword is converted into a ploughshare, and the spear into a pruning-hook. The sword is not destroyed. It is transformed.
I. This is the method of Jesus. When I enter the Kingdom of God, and become a member of the pledged and aspiring host, I pass under the active and liberal influence of grace. I bring with me all the powers which I have been exercising in the ways of the world. I bring with me this or that faculty, possessed of so much power. How does the work of grace operate upon me? Does the great King denude me of my powers, and do I remain in the world emasculated, with the compass of my being diminished, and the totality of my energies decreased? Jesus Christ our Lord never diminishes our power. Whatever powers I bring to Him I retain, only I retain them converted and glorified. He takes my swords, and He hands them back to me as ploughshares. He takes my spears, and returns them as pruninghooks.
II. How does the good Lord find us? He finds us with plenty of force in our beings, but it is a force perverted, and, therefore, destructive force. That is how the Lord found Zacchus. Zacchus was not a weakling. His force of character was abundant. He was shrewd, cute, enterprising, firm, decisive. He had force enough, but it was the force of a sword, and was being used in self-destruction. When the Lord laid hold of Zacchus, He did not destroy his shrewdness and despoil him of his foresight and enterprise. The redeemed Zacchus was just as shrewd as the unredeemed Zacchus, but the shrewdness had been transformed. It was no longer a poisoned sword; it had become a ploughshare used in the general welfare of the race.
III. Redemption does not mean power maimed or power abolished. Redemption means conversion, transformation. Converted force is force with the destructive element extracted, the sword changed into the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook.
J. H. Jowett, Meditations for Quiet Moments, p. 94.
Isa 2:4
‘I believe,’ said John Bright at Edinburgh in 1853, ‘that we shall see, and at no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more widely amongst the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and, which will be better than all the churches of the United Kingdom the churches of Britain awaking, as it were, from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the prophecy, but labour earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come a time a blessed time which shall last for ever, “when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”.’
Isa 2:4
I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter; we all see too dimly, as yet, what our great world duties are, to allow any of us to try to outline their enlarging shadows…. Reflect that their peace was not won for you by your own hands; but by theirs who long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children; and remember that neither this inherited peace, not any other, can be kept, but through the same jeopardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin; victory over the sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For many a year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to save or to subdue; nor will it be by patience of other’s suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you will ever draw nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth; when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; neither shall they learn war any more.
Ruskin, The Two Paths, 195-96.
References. II. 4. J. Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 376. R. F. Horton, ibid. vol. lxvii. 1905, p. 6. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity. II. 4, 5. J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 378.
The Light of the Lord
Isa 2:5
A vision, great and splendid, had passed before the Prophet’s mind. Jerusalem, lying low amidst the hills, and overshadowed by the mountains of Moab, became exalted above them all, and towered in grandeur towards the skies. Thus exalted, she is a sign and centre to the nations, and along the highways and up the slopes are seen marching, not the tribes of Israel only, but also the peoples of the world, who are hastening to seek instruction from the God of Israel, and to submit themselves to Him as supreme Arbitrator and Ruler. Under His universal sovereignty divisions are healed, and strife ceases, and peace covers the world. The weapons of war are no longer needed, and are applied to peaceful uses. As the glorious scene unfolds itself, God’s kingdom, supreme and universal, the nations gathered into it, the Prophet turns to his countrymen to whom God’s kingdom had first appeared, and cries, as he points to the coming glory: ‘O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord’. The earthly Jerusalem was the type of a higher power, the sign of a greater kingdom to be set up in the world. The vision is a picture and prediction of the triumph of Christianity.
I. Come ‘Ye’. The true method of extending Christianity is found in our personal submission to its sway. If we would contribute to its spread and share in its triumph we must begin with ourselves. Here lies the simple path of duty for every man who believes in Christianity, and sees in it the hope of his race.
Christianity ruling in the world is a more pleasant subject to men than Christianity ruling in the sphere of one’s own nature and life. The Prophet’s countrymen were quite willing that the kingdom of God should be supreme over men, and gloried in the prospect, but were most unwilling that it should be supreme over themselves. Christianity, giving peace to the world and bringing in the happy time when ‘the lion shall lie down with the lamb,’ is exulted in by many who have no idea of its power on themselves, subduing evil tempers, silencing angry words, and making their lives bright with tenderness and compassion.
Practical Christianity is described as ‘walking in the light of the Lord’. Christ must become to us the law of our lives. (1) Life must have constant reference to His stupendous sacrifice. (2) Life must be ruled and directed by the example of Christ. (3) Life must be ennobled and sustained by the fellowship of Christ. ‘If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.’
II. Christianity and Humanity. The motive to practical Christianity is found in the blessedness for man of universal Christianity. The appeal is inspired by the glory and peace and blessedness the world shall know when it has become the kingdom of God’s Son. Therefore, if we are vexed and moved by the woes and evils that oppress humanity, let us ally ourselves with that mighty and beneficent power which shall bring them to an end. If we sigh for the golden age of peace and brotherhood, let us yield ourselves to the sway of Christ’s Gospel of love. This is the test of our sincerity. Christianity is all that humanity needs for its true happiness.
III. Christianity as it shall be. Christianity must be considered in its real and inherent tendencies, and in its ultimate condition, not in its present aspects. We must encourage ourselves, and refute the objections of men, by Christianity in its own nature and purpose, and as it shall be when its triumph is won, and not as it now is, mixed up with the superstitions, the mistakes, the weaknesses, the sins of men. The stately edifice must be judged, if we would know its real character, not while the building is going on, with the scaffolding standing, and heaps of rubbish lying around; with the shouts of the workmen, the noise of the tools; with losses and injuries caused at times by the errors of the builders and by the storms that come; we must look at it and measure it by the design of the great Architect, by its completed proportions, as we have them in the Word of God.
IV. The Importance of Practical Piety. (1) It is free from any element of doubt and uncertainty. Many objections are taken to Christianity. Men are disputing and wrangling over its doctrines, its modes of worship, its history, and other matters belonging to it. To plunge into controversy cannot but bring unrest to the soul. Concerning practical godliness there can be no dispute. We cannot be wrong in ‘doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God’. (2) It is the mightiest and surest method of extending Christianity. The glory of the latter days shall shine upon the world, not as the. doctrines of Christianity become more accurately formulated, not as its ecclesiastical system becomes perfected, but as its transforming power, purifying the hearts and lives of men, becomes more widely felt and seen. ‘O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.’
References. II. 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No. 2713. W. J. Knox-Little, Sunlight and Shadow, p. 106; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. 1901, p. 126. H. P. Liddon, Advent in St. Paul’s, p. 37. J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p. 371. II. 5-22. V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I.-XII. p. 21. II. 7, 8. J. H. Jowett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. 1902, p. 353. II. 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No. 2922. F. D. Maurice, The Prayer Book and the Lord’s Prayer, p. 15. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 279. II. 12. J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Prophets, vol. i. p. 1. II. 17. Hugh Price Hughes, Essential Christianity, p. 233. II. 22. J. M. Neale, Sermons on the Prophets, vol. i. p. 9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii. No. 1984. III. 3. J. Parker, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. 1898, p. 322. III. 4; IV. 1. V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I.-XII. p. 30. III. 10, 11. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii. No. 729. W. Brooke, ibid. p. 207. IV. 5. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Isaiah, p. 12. R. Ellis, The Church in the Wilderness, p. 45. IV. 6. R. F. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxvi. 1904, p. 81. V. C. Gore, ibid. vol. lxix. 1906, p. 182. V. 1. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 289. V. 1-2. R. W. Hiley, A Year’s Sermons, vol. ii. p. 322. A. G. Mortimer, The Church’s Lessons for the Christian Year, vol. i. p. 15. V. 1-7. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlii. No. 2480. V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I.-XII. p. 34. V. 2. A. H. Bradford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvii. 1895, p. 171.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Personal Prophecies
Isa 2:1-5
This chapter opens with a very energetic and graphic expression, namely, “The word that Isaiah… saw.” There are two most noticeable facts: the first is the testimony of a man whose name is given; and, secondly, here is an indication of the sense namely, sight by which the revelation was perceived. We have a living witness and an eye-witness. These are not anonymous prophecies; they are not papers that were found in the morning before the dew had gone up which had been shed from dark heavens in the night-time: the prophecies are associated with men, special men men whose names are given, and they have about them at least all the outward seeming of authentic testimony. Is it possible to see a “word”? Yes, in the highest exaltation of the mind. But what is possible to the highest reverie of the soul is impossible to cold thought On this account a good deal of controversy has arisen as to prophecies and prophets, and the meaning of exalted sentiments and arguments. The difference between the prophet and the controversialist accounts for it all: the prophet was in the highest mental or spiritual excitement, his soul was ecstatic; he realised his highest and grandest self, and in an hour of transanimation he saw, he heard, he beheld the farther distances, and distinctly overheard the farther music. The controversialist comes upon the level ground, well fed, cold in temperament, cynically critical, and looks at everything through earthly mediums, or at best through literary mediums, and he pronounces the prophet wrong, whereas it was his own spiritual temperature that was below the occasion: he was not in the atmosphere in which souls live that use divine words.
The revelation was personal, and no religion is worth any consideration that does not identify itself with actual personal experience. Produce the Isaiah that “saw” the word, and let us see him. That is what Christianity does every day it produces the Christian. Who says that this world shall be saved? This man says so: we give you his name, his address, his antecedents, his character; he is a man who has a reputation to lose, and he says that having been saved himself he has come to see that by the necessity of that action all men must be brought sooner or later under the same renewing, transfiguring, and sanctifying influence. A famous argument was set up long ago to the effect that a revelation could only come to one man, and therefore that what we call revelation is only an account of a revelation that came to somebody else. The argument took a fast hold upon the attention of the men who first heard it. But it is no argument at all. Everything depends upon the nature of the revelation. Very possibly there may be some sights which come once for all, and then vanish into darkness or invisibleness: about such sights it may be well to say, Only one man saw them, and all we can say is that we have heard that he did see them. But when the revelation is by its very necessity universal; when it only comes to one man because he represents humanity, then a different standard of judgment must be erected. The Bible does not only deal with local predictions and prophecies, about a mound of stones here, and a ditch that is to be dried up yonder: it handles worlds, ages, manhood; it deals with universals, and therefore in all its sublime prophecies it does not limit itself to one personal consciousness, but through that consciousness it addresses the whole world in all the ages of its progress and liberty. So Isaiah is a living man to-day for all the purposes of this evidence, and the disciples are all living at this moment so far as the truth of Christianity is concerned. Every man sees his own aspect of the word, but it is the same word. All travellers in Switzerland see the same Matterhorn, yet there are as many Matterhorns as there are men who look upon that wondrous pinnacle of rock and snow. The thought is a unit, but the impressions it creates are a million multiplied by itself in number. So with the prophecies of the Bible and the prophecies of daily-expanding history. Every man must see them for himself, and be faithful to that which came within the limit of his own vision: by the multiplication of his personal testimony we shall soon have a universal declaration as to the presence and action of God in human history. Every man must see the word for himself. If there are men who are living upon the account which somebody else has given of a revelation they are not living at all; we do not number them among the witnesses upon the Christian side of the case; they are driven about by every wind of doctrine; they are unstable souls. But you cannot trifle with eye-witnesses; you may confuse them as to dates, and fret them as to the arrangement of details, and work upon the infirmities of their memory or their imagination; but the thing they saw comes up through it all, and stands there immovable and distinct. Only those who can speak thus of Christian prophecy and Christian discipline are to be admitted as witnesses in the elucidation and proof of the Christian cause.
Let us see what the meaning of this elevation was in the experience of Isaiah. We have it called high, ecstatic, and described it as of the nature of reverie; now let us test it at certain practical points. Let the witness proceed:
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it” ( Isa 2:2 ).
Though ecstatic, Isaiah is still rational; though animated as with a thousand lives, he still lays hold of great philosophies as within the sweep of a noble benevolence. Let us see what has to happen. “The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains.” Consider what that prediction meant in Isaiah’s time. He lived within well-defined boundaries and limitations: the Jew was not a great man in the sense of including within his personal aspirations all classes, conditions, and estates of men; left to himself he could allow the Gentiles to die by thousands daily without shedding a tear upon their fallen bodies; he lived amongst his own people; it was enough for him that the Jews were happy, for the Gentiles were but dogs. Here is a new view of human nature, a great enlargement of spiritual boundaries. Whenever you find this universal element coming into a man’s thought and language he is under the noblest influences; he is escaping tradition; he is getting away from narrowness, and prejudice, and littleness: he has identified himself with the broadest fortunes of the common world. By so much, therefore, is this high animation of Isaiah proved to be but a noble aspect of reason itself: it is reason on fire, reason transfigured, reason divinely possessed, and radiant at every point.
How does the witness proceed? We find that the worship, according to the third verse, is to be associated with teaching. “He will teach us of his ways.” So the elevation of mind does not transcend the limits of education. Man does not invent his religion or his morality; he is taught of God. But being the subject of teaching he is of necessity the subject of continual change and advancement. Then, first, he should be most humble, for he yet is conscious of ignorance in many directions; then, secondly, he should be most reverent, for he cannot teach himself, but is to be taught by the ministry of the Holy One. We are all at school. Woe betide us when we think our education perfect! “Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” Observe, “in the knowledge” of him: there is more to be known about him, more to be comprehended of his wisdom, and purpose, and grace. He has many things to say unto us, but we cannot bear them now. “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” “Brethren,” said Paul, “I count not myself to have apprehended” to have closed my education “but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;” and even he, the most majestic intellect in the Church, looking upon the mysteries of the divine love, exclaimed with the pathos of a soul that had suffered agonies for Christ, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Because we think our education completed we become proud controversialists; we suppose we know everything, and therefore, according to apostolic judgment, we know nothing. He is the wise man who is always going back to the beginning of his lesson, and who spends the first hour of his study in reviewing the acquisitions of yesterday. We are not to fly, we are to walk; we are not to see things in the gross, and in all the dimness of well-regulated perspective only; we are to see them also in detail, and to keep the least of the commandments, that we may gain capacity and disposition to obey also the larger law.
“And we will walk in his paths.” So the worship is not only associated with teaching, but with morality. Christianity is not only transportation of mind, it is also obedience of heart; it is doing the daily duty with patient industry, with all the detail which love expends on work which it expects to be received and admired by the object of its affection. Let us hear nothing about religion dissociated from morality. The most frightful divorce that can take place in all human thought is a divorce between theology and morality. If we must give up one of them, let us give up the formal and scientific theology. To surrender good behaviour is to strike the altar at the base is to smite the Cross with lightning. We are only strong as we are good; we only universalise the gospel as we make it beautiful, in temper, spirit, benevolence, sympathy, and love on our own part. The mountain of the Lord’s house will never be established in the top of the mountains until it proves its claim to be so highly and securely elevated by the genuine honesty and goodness of every soul that belongs to the Church of Christ. This is the way to mission the world, this is the way to convert the heathen, to disclose to them a beauty of character which must fascinate their attention, and excite their profoundest inquiry. We may propound our dogmas, and only enlarge the area of intellectual discussion; but if we live our lives and they be, at least in purpose and zealous endeavour, faultless, useful, beneficent, men must eventually surrender their weapons in the presence of such a testimony.
Still the prophecy proceeds:
“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” ( Isa 2:4 ).
How high Isaiah must have been even in imagination when he foresaw that possibility! It is easy for us now to take up these words and set them to chanting music, but what was it for the first speaker to deliver them? How he must have been rent in his very soul by an uncontrollable and maddening joy, when he caught sight of that dawn which brought with it the reign of peace, the sovereignty of love! Consider the age of these words: let those who find fault with the Bible attack the Bible at its strongest points. This is one of them, that a man thousands of years ago should have anticipated the song of the angels, should have seen the day of Christ afar off, and been glad with all the quietness and joy of a Christian sabbath. We look back, the prophets looked forward, and because the things they saw were in such startling contrast to the things they felt near them, surely their faith was tried: because what appeared to them was clothed with the nature of impossibility. This is the very song of the angels: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”: “Peace on earth, and good will toward men.” Here is a prediction of arbitration in case of war “He… shall rebuke many people.” Read the word “rebuke” He shall arbitrate amongst many people: he shall hear their cause; he shall redress their grievances; he shall determine their controversies, and men shall accept his award as final. And here is peace as the final goal. See the forge lighted; see the smith blowing his bellows; see him putting into his fire the sword and making it into a plowshare, and thrusting in the spear and beating it into a pruninghook. That is Christianity! Every sword that is sheathed to be taken out no more is a Christian argument completed. Every bad institution torn down and levelled with the dust is a proof that Christ was the Son of God. Every child taken off the street, and put into a public school, and educated at the public expense as a member of the commonwealth and an element in the social confederacy, is an answer to the Lord’s prayer. But whilst Christendom makes swords and spears, Christendom is theoretically Christian but practically atheistic. What a projection of mind was here on the part of Isaiah: in his day the sword was the signal of power, the spear was greater than the sceptre, the warrior was the applauded man, and he who had most chariots was most divine. Isaiah was lifted up above all the paraphernalia of kingdoms and wars and military troubles, and he foresaw the time when peace should have her victories not less renowned than war.
We dwell upon these points to show that the man was not in a mere trance that the high reverie or ecstasy in which we found his mind did not divest him of the highest reason, but gave to that reason the sight of faith, clothed that reason with the radiance and dignity of hope.
“O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord” ( Isa 2:5 ).
That is the only preparation for further revelation. Walking in the light, we shall receive increase of illumination; thankful for the morning dawn, we shall see the noontide splendour; faithful in a little, we shall be entrusted with much; honest children of the twilight, we shall yet see things in their largest and grandest reality. If we do the will, we shall know the doctrine. Blessed is that servant who shall be found waiting, watching, working when his Lord cometh, for his Lord shall entrust him with ampler riches.
Isaiah has been called the evangelical prophet: are there any traces of his title to this high designation within the compass of this text? Let us see. He speaks in the second verse of all nations flowing unto the house of the Lord: where do we find the expression “all nations” in the Gospels? We find it in the very lips of Christ “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” Christ’s is a national religion; it takes up empires, and provinces, and continents, and worlds, and ages; it is the infinite faith. Isaiah, then, seemed to suggest the very words which the Son of God himself should one day cite.
“And many people shall go and say——” By the “many people” we are to understand an enlargement of the Jewish people: other people are to bear part, and to have lot and memorial in this great enthusiasm. Does Jesus Christ ever predict anything of the kind? It was Jesus Christ who said: “They shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.” What a view was his! he saw all men drawn unto him as he was lifted up on the Cross, and lifted up in Christian character.
“Neither shall they learn war any more.” Jesus Christ is the Prince of peace, the Enemy of war, the Ruler who controls by beneficence of soul and righteousness of statute and precept. With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Such a revelation as this implies and necessitates divine power. These things do not come about by mere wishing or willing on the part of men; these are the miracles of God. Is this end worthy of Christ? What is the end? That there shall be at last a sanctuary above the mountains, that all men shall come to it in a world-wide pilgrimage, and climb the green steeps of the mountains, that they may receive the hospitality of grace and wisdom in the guest-chamber that is above. Is it worthy of Christ that he should subdue the nations, take out of them their military temper, their thirst for human blood, and make men brothers the world over? Is this a miracle worthy of his majesty? This miracle, great as it is, cannot take place in the nation until it has taken place in the individual. Herein the work of Christ is specific, and is defined with critical limitation. We cannot have a Christian nation until we have Christian men. The family is not Christian until every member of the household is a child of God. The religion will be national when the religion is individual, not before. It is worth while, therefore, to win men one by one to this state. It is worthy of an angel to wrestle with one creature until it is said of him in heaven, “Behold, he prayeth.” We cannot convert nations at once, but we can attempt to win individual sinners; we can pray with individual penitents; we can do the humble work of the school, whether it be on the Sabbath-day or on the week-day; we can fight for one soul as if it involved the destinies of the universe. Only thus, one by one, can we work. When he whose right it is to reign shall come in his power, nations may be born in a day, empires may consentaneously turn round to him and say, Hail, Son of God! But that must be his action. Ours is the humble, modest, limited, detailed action of trying to convert sons, daughters, neighbours, friends; and when the Church resolutely sets herself to do this work her Lord will not be wanting either in presence or in benediction.
Note
“The verses Isa 2:2-4 , it should be premised, recur with slight variations in the fourth chapter of Micah, and are supposed by many to have been borrowed by both writers from some older source. The prophet appears before an assembly of the people, perhaps on a Sabbath, and recites this passage, depicting in beautiful and effective imagery the spiritual preeminence to be accorded in the future to the religion of Zion. He would dwell upon the subject further; but scarcely has he begun to speak when the disheartening spectacle meets his eye of a crowd of soothsayers, of gold and silver ornaments and finery, of horses and idols; his tone immediately changes, and he bursts into a diatribe against the foreign and idolatrous fashions, the devotion to wealth and glitter, which he sees about him, and which extorts from him in the end the terrible wish, Therefore forgive them not ( Isa 2:5-9 ). And then in one of his stateliest periods Isaiah declares the judgment about to fall upon all that is ‘tall and lofty,’ upon Uzziah’s towers and fortified walls, upon the great merchant ships at Elath, upon every object of human satisfaction and pride, when wealth and rank will be impotent to save, when idols will be cast despairingly aside, and when all classes alike will be glad to find a hiding-place, as in the old days of Midianite invasion or Philistine oppression (Jdg 6:2 ; 1Sa 13:6 ), in the clefts and caves of the rocks.” Rev. Canon Driver, D.D.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XI
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH PART 3
Isa 1:1-5:30
There are three things suggested by the word, “vision,” in the title, viz:
1. Being a vision, it will frequently speak of events, that are yet future, as if they had already occurred, e.g., Isa 3:8 ; Isa 5:13 .
2. What is seen in vision must be subject to the laws of the perspective. To illustrate: One who views a series of mountains from a distance may see a number of peaks, which are many miles apart, as one object. Thus in the fulfilment of prophecy, there may be a primary fulfilment and a long distance from that, the larger fulfilment. But they appear to the eye of the prophet as one fulfilment because they are in line with each other. A notable instance of this is seen in the case of the anti-Christs. Antiochus Epiphanes, the first one, was followed by the papacy; then after him comes the World Secular Ruler; and last comes the man of sin, who fills out the outline of all the ones who have preceded him.
3. It is, as a whole, one vision. It consists, indeed, of various parts, but from the outset they present the same vision. Though the visions are greatly diversified in size, form, coloring, and other details, they are in essential character only one vision.
This vision was “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” and yet it embraces a vast variety of nations and countries. There is a primary reference here to Judah versus Israel, but in the scriptural sense, all this prophecy is “concerning Judah and Jerusalem,” i.e., the people and city of God. Other nations and countries are spoken of only as they are related to Judah and Jerusalem, or at any rate to the people of God symbolized in those names. The first chapter is the preface to the whole book, whose standpoint is the covenant as set forth in Lev 26 and Deuteronomy 28-32, being especially modeled on Deu 32 , the song of Moses, and consists of “The Great Arraignment,” divided into four well-marked messages, in each of which Jehovah is introduced as himself speaking directly to his people. The divisions are as follows: Isa_1:2-9; 10-17; 18-23; 24-31.
The first message (Isa 1:2-9 ) opens with an invocation to heaven and earth to hear Jehovah’s indictment against his people, and it contains (1) a charge of rebellion against their nourishing father; (2) a charge of brutish ignorance, indifference, and ingratitude, such as the ox and the ass would not have shown their owners; (3) a charge of corruption and estrangement from Jehovah; (4) a charge of unyielding stubbornness which rendered the chastisement of Jehovah ineffective though stroke upon stroke had fallen upon them until there was not place found on the body for another stroke; (5) a penalty of desolation of their land and the captivity of the people; (6) a hope of an elected remnant who would be purified by the coming affliction upon the nation.
In this paragraph we have a picture of severe chastisements, not of the depravity of human nature, though sin in Israel has, of course, led Jehovah to chastise his rebellious son. In Isa 1:9 we have mention of the remnant left by Jehovah. This is the first mention of it and gives us the key to the hope of Israel in this dark hour, a favorite doctrine with Isaiah and Paul.
The second message of the first chapter (Isa 1:10-17 ) contains the charge of formality without spirituality in their religion. They are compared to Sodom and Gomorrah though they abound in their ritualistic service. After showing his utter contempt for this formality without spirituality, Jehovah exhorts them to return to him. The ceremonial is not condemned here, except as it was divorced from the spiritual. The prophet insists that ritual and sacrifice must be subordinated to faith and obedience. This is in harmony with the teaching of Hos 6:5-6 ; Mic 6:6-8 ; and Jer 7:4 ; Jer 7:21 ff., et al. In Isa 1:13 here we have the mingling of wickedness with worship which is an abomination. A real reformation is twofold: (1) cease to do evil; (2) learn to do well. Human activity Isa 1:17 emphasized in Isa 1:16-17 , while divine grace is set forth ia Isa 1:18 .
The third message of this chapter (Isa 1:18-23 ) is a message of” offered mercy and grace, with an appeal to their reason and an assurance of cleansing from the deepest pollution of sin. There is a back reference here to the promises and threatenings of the Mosaic covenant (Lev 26 ; Deu 30 ) in which life and death were set before them with an exhortation to choose. There is also a renewed charge here contained in the sad description of the moral degradation of Zion (Isa 1:21-23 ) in which Jerusalem is called a harlot and her wickedness is described as abominable.
The fourth message in this chapter (Isa 1:24-31 ) is a message of judgment on the ungodly. This judgment is both punitive and corrective. God avenges himself on his enemies and at the same time purifies his people, especially the holy remnant, and restores them to their former condition of love and favor. But the utter destruction of transgressors and sinners is positively affirmed, the sinner and his work being consumed. Sin is a fire that consumes the sinner. Therefore sin is suicidal. Isa 1:9 is quoted by Paul in Rom 9:29 and is there used by him to prove his proposition that, though Israel was in number like the sands of the sea, only a remnant should be saved. The remnant of the election of grace is both an Old Testament and a New Testament doctrine, as applied to the Jews.
Someone has called Isaiah 2-5 “the true and the false glory of Israel.” In chapter I the prominent idea is Justice coming to the help of rejected mercy, and pouring out vengeance on the sinful; in Isaiah 2-5 the idea is one of mercy, by means of justice, triumphing in the restoration of holiness. The characteristic in chapter I is its stern denunciations of the Sinaitic law, while the reference to Psa 72 is subordinate; the characteristic of Isaiah 2-5 is that, though the menaces of the law are still heard in them, it is only after the clearest assurance has been given that the prophecies of 2Sa 7 and Psa 72 shall be realized.
That Isaiah 2-5 belong to the time of Uzziah, is the natural inference from Isa 1:1 and Isa 6:1 . The contents of the chapters are such as to thoroughly confirm this obvious view. They refer to a period of prosperity (Isa 2:6-16 ) and luxury (Isa 3:16-23 ); when there was great attention to military preparations (Isa 2:7 ; Isa 2:15 ; Isa 3:2 ) and commerce (v. 16), and great reliance on human power (v. 22). Above all, it is only by remembering how, “when Uzziah was strong, his heart was lifted up” (2Ch 26:16 ), and he invaded the holy place, that we can fully appreciate the emphatic assertion of God’s incomparable exaltation and inviolable sanctity which prevails throughout this section.
In Isa 2:1 we have the title to Isaiah 2-5 and it shows that the message is for Judah and not for Israel. In this sense it means the same as in 1:1. The main body of Isa 2 (Isa 2:7-22 ) is an expansion of Isa 1:31 , “the strong one shall be as tow.” Isa 2:2-4 are intensely messianic and give an assurance that, amidst the wreck of Solomon’s kingdom and earthly Zion, as herein described, the promise made to David shall stand firm. It is the promise of this scripture that a time shall come when controversies shall not be settled by war; they shall be settled by arbitration, and the arbiter is the glorious One of the prophecy, and the principles of arbitration will be his word, the law that goes forth from his mouth. Cf. Mic 4:1-5 . We may never know whether it is Isaiah or Micah that is borrowing, or whether both alike quote from some earlier prophet. This glorious and far-reaching prediction has not yet been completely fulfilled. This is the first messianic prophecy of Isaiah, the pre-eminently evangelical prophet.
But what is meant here by “the latter days”? I cite only two scriptures, which tell us exactly what is meant. John, in his first letter says, “this is the last day,” or the last time, that is, the times of the gospel are “the latter days.” The prophet, Joel, says, “It shall come to pass in the last days,” or the latter days, “That God will pour out his Spirit,” and we know from the New Testament that this was fulfilled in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of our Lord. It is settled by these words of God that “the latter days” in the Old Testament prophecies are the gospel days of the New Testament. Let us remember that the gospel days are the last days. There is no age to succeed the gospel age. Whatever of good is to be accomplished in this world is to be accomplished in the gospel days, and by the means of the gospel. All this universal peace arbitration, knowledge of the Lord and his kingdom come by means of this same gospel.
I shall not cite the scriptures to prove it, but it is clearly established by the New Testament that the “mountain of the Lord’s house” here is the visible, not invisible, church of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he established himself, empowered it through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and it is through the instrumentality of that church that the great things of this prophecy are to be brought about. This passage distinctly says, “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Our Saviour came, established his church, and then said, “Go into all the world, etc.” and “Ye shall preach the gospel to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” The instrument then, by which these things are to be accomplished is just the gospel which we preach and which people hear and by which they are saved.
It is here prophesied that the nations shall be impressed with the visibility of the Lord’s house, the church, and shall say, “Come, ye, and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.” They shall be enlightened by the light of the church, which being full of the Holy Spirit shall catch the eye of the nations and attract them. Then will they gay, “Come and let us go up to the house of the Lord.” The purpose of all this shall be that he may teach them. The church is God’s school and God himself is the teacher) and they are taught the principles of arbitration.
The arbiter of the nations, as here described, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the daysman betwixt the nations. He and the principles of his gospel alone can bring about such a state of things that “there shall be war no more.” The result of this arbitration will be universal peace (Isa 2:4 ). This shall be a glorious consummation when will be settled by arbitration controversies of every kind whether between nations or individuals, and righteousness shall prevail throughout the whole world. God’s means of preparation of the nation for the great future, as just shown in the messianic prophecy, are his judgments. These only can prepare the nation for this great future (Isa 2:5-4:1 ), the items of which are (1) the sins to be visited and (2) the classes of objects to be visited by these judgments. The sins to be visited by these judgments (Isa 2:5-9 ) are soothsaying, heathen alliances, luxury, militarism, and idolatry.
The objects against which these judgments are to be brought (Isa 2:10-4:1 ) are everything proud and lofty:
1. Inanimate things that minister to pride, such as cedars and oaks, mountains, military defenses, ships and idols (2:1021).
2. Men, especially the ruling classes (Isa 2:22-3:15 ). In Isa 3:4 we have a picture of weak, foolish rulers. Cf. Isa 3:12 . The ruling classes were especially to blame for the growing sin and corruption of Judah. They were “grinding the face of the poor.”
3. Women, for pride and wantonness (Isa 3:16-4:1 ). Here let us recall the indictment of the cruel, carousing women by Amos (Amo 4:1-3 ), and the words of Hosea about the prevalence of social impurity in his day (Hos 4:2 ; Hos 4:13-14 ). Isaiah dumps out the entire wardrobe of the luxurious sinner of the capital city. What a pity that wicked Paris should set the fashions for Christian women!
After this blast of judgments then follow the messianic prosperity, purity, and protection (Isa 4:2-6 ), a beautiful picture on a very dark background. Here we have the first mention of the’ key word, “Branch,” in “the Branch of the Lord.”
The subject of Isa 5 is the vineyard and its lessons, and the three essential things to note are: (1) the disappointing vineyard and its identification; (2) a series of woes announced; and (3) the coming army.
The prophet shows great skill here in securing attention by reciting a bit of a love song and then gliding gradually into his burning message to a sinful people. The description of this vineyard in the text is vivid and lifelike, showing the pains taken by the owner in preparing, tending, and guarding it. The great pains thus taken enhanced the expectation and, therefore, the disappointment. So, in despair and disgust he destroyed the vineyard and made its place desolate.
The prophet identifies the vineyard with Israel and Judah which had their beginnings, as a nation, with Abraham, and from the day of its planting it was under the special care of Jehovah. He always gave it the most desired spot in which to dwell, both in Egypt and in Canaan, but it never did live up to its opportunities and more, it never did yield the fruits of justice and righteousness, but instead, oppression and a cry. These general terms give way to the particular in the woes that follow. There are six distinct woes pronounced (Isa 5:8-23 ) against sinners in this paragraph, as follows:
1. Woe unto the land monopolies. This is a picture of what may be observed in many parts of the world today. Monopolies lead to loneliness and desolation. God is against the land shark. For a description of conditions, similar to Isaiah’s, in England, gee Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, in which are found these lines: Ill fares the land, to hastening his a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 2. Woe unto the drunken revelers. This is a vivid picture of wine with its accompaniments and results. People inflamed with strong drink relish a kind of music which is not very religious. These musical instruments are all right but they were put to the wrong use. Intoxicating drinks not only pervert the instruments of the Lord, but they make their subjects disregard the works and rights of Jehovah. In Isa 5:13 we see the effect of spiritual ignorance, which is captivity, perhaps the Babylonian captivity, or it may refer to Israel’s captivity already begun. Sheol in Isa 5:14 refers to the place of the departed, the underworld in which the “shades” rested. Here the picture is that of the increasing multitudes in the spirit world because of their disobedience here and God’s destruction of them, after which their land becomes the pasture for the flocks of foreign nomads.
3. Woe unto the defiant unbelievers. This is a picture of the harness of sin, and awful effect produced on those who follow its course. They are harnessed by it and rush madly on in their defying of the Holy One of Israel.
4. Woe unto the perverters of moral distinction, calling evil good, and good evil, putting darkness for light, and light for darkness. Their moral sense is so blunted that they cannot make moral distinctions, as Paul says in Hebrews, “not having their senses exercised to distinguish between good and evil.”
5. Woe unto the conceited men, perhaps their politicians. They are often so wise that they cannot be instructed, but they can tell us how to run any kind of business, from the farm to the most intricate machinery of the government. They may have never had any experience in the subject which they teach, yet they can tell those who have spent their lives in such service just how to run every part of the business down to the minutest detail. But they are really “wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.”
6. Woe unto drunken officers, who justify the wicked for a bribe and pervert justice. When one is once allowed to look in upon our courts of justice (?) he can imagine that Isaiah was writing in the age in which we live. He goes on to show the just punishment that they were destined to receive because of their rejection of the law of Jehovah and because they despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
The conditions herein set forth (Isa 5:25-30 ) reach beyond those of the Assyrian invasion and find a larger fulfilment in the carrying away of Judah by the Chaldeans. Here Jehovah is represented as giving the signal and the call to the nations to assemble for the invasion of Judah and Israel, which may apply either to the Assyrians or to the Chaldeans and, perhaps, to both. Then the prophet describes the speed with which they come and do their destructive work, which may apply to the march of the Assyrians against Samaria and the Chaldeans against Jerusalem. (For minute details of description see the text.) The prophet closes his description of this invading army (or armies) and their destructive work, with Israel in the deepest gloom, which was fulfilled in three instances: (1) the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians; (2) the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans; (3) the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Perhaps all three of these events are in the perspective of the prophet’s vision, which constitute the dark picture and disappointing gloom with which he closes chapter 5 and section I of his book.
Isa 6 gives us Isaiah’s encouraging vision of Jehovah. The preceding section closed in the deepest gloom; the light of prophecy only made the darkness more fearful. Already the heir of David’s throne, Uzziah, had been “humbled” by God’s stroke, “cut away” as a withered branch, excluded from the house of the Lord, and continued till death “unhealed of his plague.” The prophet had delivered his message faithfully, but being only a man, he was conscious of the failure of his message, and therefore, at such a time he needed the comforting revelation of Jehovah, just such as the vision of Isa 6 affords. Thus Jehovah, as he comforted Abraham, Jacob, Moses Joshua, Elijah, the twelve, Paul, and John, in their darkest hours by a vision of himself, so here he comforts Isaiah in his gloom of despondency.
A brief outline of Isa 6 is as follows:
1. The heavenly vision, a vision of the Lord, his throne, his train, the seraphim with six wings each and saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts.” These creatures are God’s attendants and the six wings represent the speed with which they fly in carrying out his behests, but when in divine presence four of them were used for another purpose. One pair veiled the seraph’s face from the intolerable effulgence of divine glory; another pair veiled his feet, soiled in various ministrations, which were not meet for the all-pure presence.
2. The sense of unworthiness produced by the vision and the symbolic cleansing which encouraged him in his mission. Here the prophet acts very much as Job and John did when they saw his holiness, crying out, “unclean.” This is a most natural result from the contrast between relative and absolute holiness. Job maintained his integrity until he saw the Lord and then he was ready to say, “I abhor myself and repent.” So John fell at the feet of the glorious Son of God as one dead, and Peter said, “Depart; I am a sinful man.” With these examples before us we may conclude that he who boasts of his holiness advertises thereby his guilty distance from God.
3. The offer for service, which naturally follows such a preparation as Isaiah had just received. This, too, is an expression of renewed courage, in the face of such a dark prospect.
4. The message and its effect. He was to preach with the understanding that his message would not be received and that the hearer, because of this message, would pass under the judicial blindness. This passage is quoted by our Lord (Mat 13:14-15 ) to show the same condition in his day and that the responsibility for this condition did not rest upon the prophet or the preacher but that it was the natural result of an inexorable law, viz: that the effect of the message on the hearer of it depends altogether upon the attitude of the hearer toward the message. Them that reject, it hardens and them that accept, it gives life. Thus it has ever been with subjects of gospel address, but the message must be delivered whether it proves a savor of life unto life or of death unto death.
5. The terrible judgments to follow. Here the prophet asks, “How long is to continue this judicial blindness?” and the answer comes back, “Until cities are laid waste, etc.” This includes their captivity in Babylon, their rejection of the Saviour and consequent dispersion, and will continue until the Jews return and embrace the Messiah whom they now reject until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
6. The final hope expressed. This is the hope of the “remnant,” “the holy seed.” This was Isaiah’s hope of Israel in his day; it was Christ’s hope of Israel in his day; it was Paul’s hope of Israel in his day, and is it not our hope of Israel in our day? “The remnant according to the election of grace.”
QUESTIONS
1. What three things are suggested by the word, “vision,” in the title?
2. How do you explain the fact that this vision was “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” and yet it embraces a vast variety of nations and countries?
3. What relation does Isa 1 sustain to the whole book, what it standpoint, after what is it modeled, and of what does it consist?
4. What are the contents of the first message?
5. What expressions in this paragraph are worthy of note and what is their application?
6. What is the second message of Isa 1 (Isa 1:10-17 )?
7. What is the third message of this chapter (Isa 1:18-23 ), what the back reference here and what the renewed charge?
8. What is the fourth message in this chapter (Isa 1:24-31 ) and what in particular, the hope here held out to Judah?
9. What is the New Testament quotation from this chapter and what use is there made of it?
10. What is the nature of the contents of Isaiah 2-5 and what the relation of this section to Isa 1 ?
11. To what period of time does the section (Isaiah 2-5) belong and what the proof?
12. What is the title to this section and what does it include?
13. What is the close relation of Isaiah 1-2?
14. What is the assurance found in the introduction (Isa 1:2-4 ) and how does this passage compare with Micah’s prophecy on the same point?
15. What is meant here by “the latter days”?
16. What is meant by “the mountain of the Lord’s house”?
17. What means shall be used by the church in accomplishing these results?
18. What spirit of inquiry is here awakened?
19. To what purpose shall all this be?
20. Who is to be the arbiter of the nations, as here described?
21. What is the result of this arbitration?
22. What God’s means of preparation of the nation for the great future, as just shown in the messianic prophecy, and what, in general the items of judgment?
23. What are the sins to be visited by these judgments (Isa 2:5-9 )?
24. What are the objects against which these judgments are to be brought (Isa 2:10-4:1 )?
25. What shall follow these judgments on God’s people (Isa 4:2-6 )?
26. What is the subject of Isa 5 and what the three main points in it?
27. Describe the disappointing vineyard.
28. Identify this vineyard and show its parallels in history.
29. Itemize the woes that follow (Isa 5:8-23 ) and note the points of interest in each case.
30. What is the coming army as predicted in Isa 5:25-30 and what the parallels of this prophecy and its fulfilment?
31. What is the subject of Isa 6 and what its relation to the section (Isaiah 2-5) and what its bearing on the condition of Judah at this time?
32. Give a brief outline of Isa 6 and the application of each point.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
XXVII
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST IN ISAIAH
The relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy is that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. To him give all the prophets witness. All the scriptures, the law, the prophets, and the psalms, testify of him. And we are fools, and slow of heart to credit adequate testimony when we distrust any part of the inspired evidence.
Of the ancient prophets Isaiah was perhaps the most notable witness of the coming Messiah. An orderly combination of his many messianic utterances amounts to more than a mere sketch, indeed, rather to a series of almost life-sized portraits. As a striking background for these successive portraits the prophet discloses the world’s need of a Saviour, and across this horrible background of gloom the prophet sketches in startling strokes of light the image of a coming Redeemer.
In Isa 2:2-4 we have the first picture of him in Isaiah, that of the effect of his work, rather than of the Messiah himself. This is the establishment of the mountain of the Lord’s house on the top of the mountains, the coming of the nations to it and the resultant millennial glory.
In Isa 4:2-6 is another gleam from the messianic age in which the person of the Messiah comes more into view in the figure of a branch of Jehovah, beautiful and glorious. In sketching the effects of his work here the prophet adds a few strokes of millennial glory as a consummation of his ministry.
In Isa 7:14 he delineates him as a little child born of a virgin, whose coming is the light of the world. He is outlined on the canvas in lowest humanity and highest divinity, “God with us.” In this incarnation he is the seed of the woman and not of the man.
The prophet sees him as a child upon whom the government shall rest and whose name is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6 ). This passage shows the divinity of Christ and the universal peace he is to bring to the world. In these names we have the divine wisdom, the divine power, the divine fatherhood, and the divine peace.
In Isa 11:1-9 the prophet sees the Messiah as a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, i.e., of lowly origin, but possessing the Holy Spirit without measure who equips him for his work, and his administration wrought with skill and justice, the result of which is the introduction of universal and perfect peace. Here the child is presented as a teacher. And such a teacher! On him rests the seven spirits of God. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. He judges not according to appearances and reproves not according to rumors. With righteousness he judges the poor and reproves with equality in behalf of the meek. His words smite a guilty world like thunderbolts and his very breath slays iniquity. Righteousness and faithfulness are his girdle. He uplifts an infallible standard of morals.
In Isa 40:3-8 appears John the Baptist, whom Isaiah saw as a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming King.
In Isa 11:2 ; Isa 42:1 ; Isa 61:1-3 the prophet saw the Messiah as a worker in the power of the Spirit, in whom he was anointed at his baptism. This was the beginning of his ministry which was wrought through the power of the Holy Spirit. At no time in his ministry did our Lord claim that he wrought except in the power of the Holy Spirit who was given to him without measure.
In Isa 35:1-10 the Messiah is described as a miracle worker. In his presence the desert blossoms as a rose and springs burst out of dry ground. The banks of the Jordan rejoice. The lame man leaps like a hart, the dumb sing and the blind behold visions. The New Testament abounds in illustrations of fulfilment. These signs Christ presented to John the Baptist as his messianic credentials (Mat 11:1-4 ).
The passage (Isa 42:1-4 ) gives us a flashlight on the character of the Messiah. In the New Testament it is expressly applied to Christ whom the prophet sees as the meek and lowly Saviour, dealing gently with the blacksliding child of his grace. In Isa 22:22 we have him presented as bearing the key of the house of David, with full power to open and shut. This refers to his authority over all things in heaven and upon earth. By this authority he gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter one for the Jews and the other for the Gentiles who used one on the day of Pentecost and the other at the house of Cornelius, declaring in each case the terms of entrance into the kingdom of God. This authority of the Messiah is referred to again in Revelation:
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying. Fear not: I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Rev 7:17
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphis write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and none shall shut, and shutteth and none openeth. Rev 3:7
In Isa 32:1-8 we have a great messianic passage portraying the work of Christ as a king ruling in righteousness, in whom men find a hiding place from the wind and the tempest. He is a stream in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
In Isa 28:14-18 the Messiah is presented to w as a foundation stone in a threefold idea:
1. A tried foundation stone. This is the work of the master mason and indicates the preparation of the atone for its particular function.
2. An elect or precious foundation stone. This indicates that the stone was selected and appointed. It was not self-appointed but divinely appointed and is therefore safe.
3. A cornerstone, or sure foundation stone. Here it is a foundation of salvation, as presented in Mat 16:18 . It is Christ the Rock, and not Peter. See Paul’s foundation in 1 Corinthians:
According to the grace of God which was given unto me; as a wise masterbuilder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1Co 3:10-11 .
In Isa 49:1-6 he is presented as a polished shaft, kept close in the quiver. The idea is that he is a mighty sword. In Revelation, Christ is presented to John as having a sharp, twoedged sword proceeding out of his mouth.
In Isa 50:2 ; Isa 52:9 f.; Isa 59:16-21 ; Isa 62:11 we have the idea of the salvation of Jehovah. The idea is that salvation originated with God and that man in his impotency could neither devise the plan of salvation nor aid in securing it. These passages are expressions of the pity with which God looks down on a lost world. The redemption, or salvation, here means both temporal and spiritual salvation salvation from enemies and salvation from sin.
In Isa 9:1 f. we have him presented as a great light to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali. In Isa 49:6 we have him presented as a light to the Gentiles and salvation to the end of the earth: “Yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”
In Isa 8:14-15 Isaiah presents him as a stone of stumbling: “And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.”
The prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection are found in Isa 50:4-9 ; Isa 52:13-53:12 . In this we have the vision of him giving his “back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.” We see a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His visage is so marred it startled all nations. He is a vicarious sacrifice. The chastisement of the peace of others is on him. The iniquity of others is put on him. It pleases the Father to bruise him until he has poured out his soul unto death as an offering for sin.
The teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews is his teaching concerning the “holy remnant,” a favorite expression of the prophet. See Isa 1:9 ; Isa 10:20-22 ; Isa 11:11 ; Isa 11:16 ; Isa 37:4 ; Isa 37:31-32 ; Isa 46:3 . This coincides with Paul’s teaching in Romans 9-11.
In Isa 32:15 we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest,” and in Isa 44:3 : “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”
In Isa 11:10 he is said to be the ensign of the nations: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be glorious.”
Isa 19:18-25 ; Isa 54:1-3 ; Isa 60:1-22 teach the enlargement of the church. The great invitation and promise are found in Isa 55 .
The Messiah in judgments is found in Isa 63:1-6 . Here we behold an avenger. He comes up out of Edom with dyed garments from Bozra. All his raiment is stained with the blood of his enemies whom he has trampled in his vengeance as grapes are crushed in the winevat and the restoration of the Jews is set forth in Isa 11:11-12 ; Isa 60:9-15 ; Isa 66:20 . Under the prophet’s graphic pencil or glowing brush we behold the establishment and growth of his kingdom unlike all other kingdoms, a kingdom within men, a kingdom whose principles are justice, righteousness, and equity and whose graces are faith, hope, love, and joy, an undying and ever-growing kingdom. Its prevalence is like the rising waters of Noah’s flood; “And the waters prevailed and increased mightily upon the earth. And the water prevailed mightily, mightily upon the earth; and all the high mountains, that are under the whole heavens, were covered.”
So this kingdom grows under the brush of the prophetic limner until its shores are illimitable. War ceases. Gannenta rolled in the blood of battle become fuel for fire. Conflagration is quenched. Famine outlawed. Pestilence banished. None are left to molest or make afraid. Peace flows like a river. The wolf dwells with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the kid. The calf and the young lion walk forth together and a little child is leading them. The cow and the bear feed in one pasture and their young ones are bedfellows. The sucking child safely plays over the hole of the asp, and weaned children put their hands in the adder’s den. In all the holy realms none hurt nor destroy, because the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the fathomless ocean is full of water. Rapturous vision! Sublime and ineffable consummation! Was it only a dream?
In many passages the prophet turns in the gleams from the millennial age, but one of the clearest and best on the millennium, which is in line with the preceding paragraph, Isa 11:6-9 : “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”
The prophet’s vision of the destruction of death is given in Isa 25:8 : “He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people will he take away from all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it,” and in Isa 26:19 : “Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.”
The clearest outlines of the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained” are to be found in Isa 25:8 , and in two passages in chapter Isa 66 : Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her; that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream: and ye shall suck thereof; ye shall be borne upon the side, and shall be dandled upon the knees, as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass: and the hands of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants ; and he will have indignation against his enemies. Isa 66:10-14
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. Isa 66:22-23
QUESTIONS
1. What is the relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy?
2. What can you say of Isaiah as a witness of the Messiah?
3. What can you say of Isaiah’s pictures of the Messiah and their background?
4. Following in the order of Christ’s manifestation, what is the first picture of him in Isaiah?
5. What is the second messianic glimpse in Isaiah?
6. What is Isaiah’s picture of the incarnation?
7. What is Isaiah’s picture of the divine child?
8. What is Isaiah’s vision of his descent, his relation to the Holy Spirit, his administration of justice, and the results of his reign?
9. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah’s herald?
10. What is the prophet’s vision of his anointing?
11. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a miracle worker?
12. What is the prophet’s vision of the character of the Messiah?
13. What is the prophet’s vision of him as the key bearer?
14. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a king and a hiding place?
15. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah as a foundation stone?
16. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a polished shaft?
17. In what passages do we find the idea of the salvation of Jehovah, and what the significance of the idea?
18. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah as a light?
19. Where does Isaiah present him as a stone of stumbling?
20. What is the prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection?
21. What is the teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews?
22. Where do we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit?
23. Where is he said to be the ensign of the nations?
24. What passages teach the enlargement of the church?
25. Where is the great invitation and promise?
26. Where is the Messiah in judgment?
27. What passages show the restoration of the Jews?
28. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah’s kingdom?
29. What is the prophet’s vision of the millennium?
30. What is the prophet’s vision of the destruction of death?
31. What is the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained?”
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Isa 2:1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Ver. 1. The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw. ] An august title or inscription, such as is not to be found in the whole book again, unless it be in the former chapter. There, alas! he had laboured in vain, and spent his strength for nought, and in vain. as Isa 49:4 Howbeit, he will try again, as considering that he had lost many a worse labour; and although his report were not believed, Isa 53:1 yet he would bestow one more sermon upon them, the short notes and general heads whereof we have in this and the two following chapters: I say, the general heads, for Calvin in his preface to this book telleth us, that it was the manner of the holy prophets to gather a compendious sum of what they had preached to the people, and the same to affix to the gates of the temple, that the prophecy might be the better viewed and learned of all, after which it was taken down by the priest, and put into the treasury of the temple, for the benefit of after ages.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isaiah Chapter 2
We have seen that though the people if repentant are assured of God’s blessing, they are shown that governmental punishment must first be executed on the wicked by Him Who alone is capable of righteousness; then, and not before, shall Zion be redeemed in deed and truth. This redemption in power and with judgement is manifestly distinct from redemption by blood only, as we know it in Christ by the gospel of salvation. Judah’s deliverance is accompanied by divine judgement. Jerusalem’s heart is at length reached, her time of hardness accomplished, her iniquity pardoned.
“The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the end of days,* [that] the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top (head) of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples will go and say, Come and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and Jehovah’s word from Jerusalem. And he will judge between the nations, and will reprove many peoples; and they will forge their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning knives: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (vv. 1-4). “He” Who thus reigns is Jehovah, but, having become man, is withal the Messiah, and the Son of man with rights universal given Him.
*Compare the expression, “the last days” or its equivalent in Gen 49:1 ; Num 24:14 , Deu 4:30 , Deu 31:29 , Jer 23:20 ; Jer 30:24 , Jer 48:47 , Jer 49:39 , Eze 38:16 ; Dan 2:28 ; Dan 10:14 ; Dan 12:13 ; Hos 3:5 ; Mic 4:1 . All refer to the same time as Isa 2:2 the days when the power of the Second man supercedes the sinful weakness of the first. Joe 2:28 is “afterwards,” or Thereupon,” but Its full accomplishment also is in that day.
Apply this to Zion and the nations in the future day, and all is clear, sure, and consistent; accommodate it to the church, either now or in that day, and what contradiction ensues! The Lord Jesus, when here, announced that “the hour cometh when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, ye shall worship the Father,” and that “the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such the Father also seeketh as his worshippers” (Joh 4:21-23 ). The Saviour Who alone leads by the Spirit into true worship is now in heaven. There is our centre, not Jerusalem nor any other place on earth, save as He is in the midst. And we are exhorted to approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having boldness for entering into the holiest by the blood of Jesus: such is the new and living way which He dedicated for us; as we have also a great priest over the house of God. Nor is this all. For it is of the essence of the church that we are no longer what we were after the flesh: “For by () one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1Co 12:13 ). When Christ comes again, the glorified will have manifestly their heavenly blessedness as they have the title even now (1Co 15:48 , 1Co 15:49 ). Thus they are in quite a different position and relationship from either the nations, or even Jerusalem. They are members of His body Who will reign over both Israel and the nations in that day. But He is sitting now, rejected by both and glorified on His Father’s throne; and we who believe are united to Him, one new man, both reconciled to God in one body by the cross. All for us is merged in heavenly glory; whilst on earth we are told to go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. For we are not of the world as He is not; and if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.
Undoubtedly to apply these terms to the feeble remnant’s return from the Babylonish captivity refutes itself. But will the language seem hyperbolical when Christ appears in the glory of His kingdom? Nor are other allegories more tenable. What for instance can exceed the poverty of Theodoret’s scheme (Opera 2., i. 183, ed. J. L. Schulze)? He tries to find the accomplishment in the flourishing unity of the Roman empire when our Lord first appeared, in the conquered races that composed it being no longer at war but engaged in agriculture, and in the unhindered diffusion of the gospel far and wide. Cyril of Alexandria (in his Commentary on our prophet) and Eusebius of Caesarea (Dem. Evang. 8: 3), and Latin Fathers like Jerome (in loco) follow in the same wake. Yet one knows nothing better in the attempts of men since, unless the Popish interpretation be thought more homogeneous, inasmuch as it is all supposed to be verified in the Catholic church. Certainly the interpretation of others cannot be preferred, which makes it all mystical, and imagines its accomplishment in the unbroken oneness and peace of all believers, in their perfect holiness, and their entire subjection to the scriptures. As on earth the actual state is far different, some seek more consistency with truth by transferring the scene to heaven when every conflict is over; and these views have prevailed amongst Protestants.
It is apparent that we have here the similar, if not same, prediction which Micah gives in his prophecy (Mic 4:1-3 ). The two prophets were contemporaries. The question arises, who first communicated it from God? Three opinions are conceivable, and, as a fact, the commentators range themselves respectively under each of them: (1) Micah adopted it from Isaiah (Vitringa, Calmet, Lowth, Beckhaus, Umbreit). (2) Isaiah from Micah (Michaelis, Gesenius, Hengstenberg, Hoffmann, Drechsler, Pusey). (3) Both from an older source (Koppe, Rosenmller, Maurer, De Wette, Knobel, Vogel, and Hitzig, Ewald specializing Joel). The certain fact is, that one prophet uses another prophet’s words, only with such variations as the inspiring Spirit was pleased to sanction, as we find Daniel gathering light from the then to be accomplished word of Jehovah to Jeremiah (Dan 9:2 ). The hypothesis of an older source seems wanton and unworthy of serious discussion. Certainly the great apostle, in writing his first pastoral to Timothy (1Ti 5:18 ) adopts as scripture the language of his beloved companion Luke (Luk 10:7 ), and not that of the apostle Matthew (Mat 10:10 ). And some have argued that this passage in Isaiah was originally Micah’s, from the context in each. For in Micah we have the desolation of Zion and of the mountain of the house, at the end of his Mic 3 , followed immediately in the beginning of Mic 4 by this promise of glory, where the connecting particle (rendered “and,” or “but,” according to the exigency of the discourse) is fully in place, “But in the latter days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow unto it. And many nations shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.” Isaiah has the same initiatory particle, as if cited just as it stood, though in his case sounding strangely. But Dr. Kay has shown that the particle is used more freely than this admits, and that the time favours Isaiah as the original rather than Micah (Speaker’s Comm. in loco).
However this may have been, these opening verses of Isa 2 constitute a noble frontispiece of lofty expectation for the earth’s blessing. The previous preface of Isa 1 proved the necessity of fiery judgement to consume the transgressors, and leave room for Jehovah thereby to purify a remnant for His purpose of blessing. Whatever intervene through creatures, His goodwill shall assuredly triumph in the end. And in the answering vision of glory, which winds up the strain (Isa 4:2 ), we see the Branch of Jehovah, often to reappear, on Whose agency all depends. Here it is the establishment, beyond all rivalry, of what had been hitherto feeble and fluctuating and fallen, the place which Jehovah chose of old to cause His name to dwell in, now at length cleared of every mark of evil, dishonour, ruin, and exalted in holy and indisputable supremacy. Then will all the nations flow unto it in undivided and peaceful stream. They need no compulsion then, nor yet inducements any more than emulation. They have seen Jehovah’s uplifted hand; they have beheld His arm laid bare. His judgements have been in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world are now learning righteousness. Nor need we wonder, since fire will have devoured His adversaries, who were many, strong, and high. And thus it is not merely that Israel has the heart enlarged to invite them in the sense of that mercy which endures for ever, and alone sufficient to save themselves, but the Gentiles also join together in holy zeal and earnestness. “And many peoples will go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.”
Never has it been thus under the gospel for a single nation. At no time hitherto has one people thus acted and exhorted others as a whole, no, not for a day; whereas here with Micah we have a double witness of it in the divine forecast of “that day” for all the earth. “Today” on the contrary, even for His chosen people, the word is, “Oh, that ye would hear His voice. Harden not your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness.” But then the wilderness and the dry land shall be gladdened, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. For then Jehovah reigns in the person of His Image and Anointed; and Satan will have been hurled from his bad eminence as the prince of the world and god of this age, which he is still. Then the latter rain of the Spirit will have fallen on all flesh with fertilising power. “And he will judge among the nations, and will reprove many peoples; and they will forge their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning knives: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war any more.” Can terms more explicitly or exclusively describe when God shall judge in the sense of reigning over the quick? It is humbling to think that Christian men could persuade themselves that these magnificent and delightful changes for mankind have ever been verified. They are reserved exclusively to the praise of Jehovah and His Christ in the latter day. Should we not rejoice that so it is to be?
Nor is it without interest or importance to notice that the later words of Isaiah render just the same testimony in Isa 60 ; Isa 61 ; Isa 62 and Isa 66 . Throughout the exaltation of Zion is still more fully developed, as it is involved plainly enough in Isa 42 and Isa 49 . As Jehovah will introduce that day, pleading in word and fire with “all flesh,” which mankind has never yet seen, so will He gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see His glory after an unparalleled sort. “And it shall come to pass that from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh [not all Israel only] will come to worship before me, saith Jehovah” (Isa 66:23 ). In Zec 14 it is declared that the spared of all the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year by year to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. Mal 1:11 provides for the constant and universal recognition of Jehovah’s name among the Gentiles, and due worship in every place. More copious testimony assures us that they will regularly and solemnly come up, as is only right and due, to that earthly centre where He has set His name as nowhere else; a fact and principle entirely incompatible with “the hour that now is” as the Lord Himself clearly laid down in Joh 4 . If this distinction be not firmly kept, if this age be confounded with that which is to come the mind of God is lost and darkness ensues as to the preset and future. Zep 3:8-10 is most explicit that the judgement of the Gentiles, and the restoration of the Jews then converted, precede the blessedness here described: “Therefore, wait ye for me, saith Jehovah, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.”
The Vision contemplates a wholly unprecedented panorama to be seen by every eye in that day. Christ will have been manifested, instead of being, as now, hidden on High; and we also shall be then manifested with Him in Glory. But no word here reveals our association with Him. As He will have the earth as well as the heaven put under Him, in fact as now in title the holy hill of Zion will be His seat as Jehovah’s anointed King; and the nations will be given Him, and the uttermost parts of the earth. Jerusalem will be purged, and the people restored, not merely in virtue of an interior work, but through searching and solemn judgements. His enemies and adversaries must fall under His hand. As the mountain of Jehovah’s house is established above every rival whatever they material vastness, or the loftiest associations of the creature, thither flock the humbled yet happy and obedient nations to pay homage and worship, and to learn that they may walk in His paths, owning Himself King of kings and Lord of lords, and Israel as His peculiar people here below. Jehovah reigns, and the earth rejoices as never before. universal peace accordingly in subjection to the God of Jacob characterises the nation hitherto self willed and ambitious, jealous and cruel, but now under His firm and righteous sceptre, Who from His earthly centre of divine light and resistless power judges among them, and reproves many peoples. As these are the regular designations of the Gentiles, so with the same literality are Israel and Judah, Jerusalem the capital and Zion the citadel of the chosen people. Quite as little is Jehovah, the God of Jacob, to be taken vaguely; for this definite name will then shine and be known, when His mighty acts have made good unmistakably His purpose from of old that Israel shall be the chief people on earth (Deu 32:8 , Deu 32:9 ), restored from all halting and affliction and evil, and Jehovah reigning over them in mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever.
Rev 21:9-27 presents the heavenly glory in that day, but it is wholly different from that of Jerusalem and the temple as show in Isaiah. The bride, the Lamb’s wife, is seen under the symbol of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, but not on the earth till the eternal day (v. 3). Instead of Jehovah’s house being the centre of attraction, no temple is seen therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. There is thus complete contrast with the Jerusalem of that day in which the temple with its ordinances and officials occupies much the largest part of Ezekiels last great vision (Ezek. 40 – 47). The utmost care is thus taken that should not confound the earthly city with the heavenly one. The difference turns on relationship to Christ. The new Jerusalem is His heavenly bride, and reigns with Him; the earthly Jerusalem is the city of the great King, and is reigned over by Him. Whilst it is grace now to suffer with Him on earth, it is to fit us for heaven. Israel will have deliverance by judgement on the earth, as scripture shows. The Christian, the church, makes its way by faith while evil is in power till the Lord comes; for Israel, or Jerusalem, the evil is crushed, and righteousness reigns over the earth in Christ’s person from first to last. No contrast can be more decided.
This is plain if we be simple. It is not only Shiloh come provisionally, as at the first advent; but when “that day” arrives the link with Him, now broken by Judah’s ruinous unbelief, is riveted for ever; and as God’s repentant people welcome in Jehovah’s name their once rejected Messiah, to Him shall be the obedience of the peoples (Gen 49:10 ). The early oracle of dying Jacob will be at length fulfilled by the living God of Jacob, not in part, but in its entire and unforced meaning. It has no reference to the intermediate Christian system; when Christ’s flock compared with the world is “little,” having tribulation assured in the world; despised, hated, and persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and yet more for Christ’s. They have the kingdom in mystery, not in manifestation as it will be in that day; and hence are we called to the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, waiting for heavenly glory with Him. The vision sets nothing of this before us, but the kingdom not in patience but in power, when the Lord sits on His Own throne and reigns in righteousness. It is no longer the Gospel of God’s grace calling believers to Christ in heaven, doing well, suffering for it, and taking it patiently, in accordance with grace reigning through righteousness unto life eternal by Jesus Christ our Lord, but out of Zion shall go forth the law, and Jehovah’s word from Jerusalem; for He shall then be King over all the earth, in that day one Jehovah, His name one. Thus He is both Messiah reigning in Zion, and Son of man, to Whom was given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and a kingdom which shall not be destroyed. This new age characterises our vision, in evident contradistinction to what we now experience in the gospel, which separates from the world, and gathers together God’s children in one for heaven. Such is the church of God.
Thus then is the divine government of this world, of which all the prophets bear witness as Christ’s reign over the earth. Isa 4:2-6 describes its application to Jerusalem, as Isa. 11 – Isa 12 to the earth and the creatures on it, with Israel’s joy. Compare also Isa 24:21-23 ; Isa 25 ; Isa 27 ; Isa 22 ; Isa 33:20-24 ; Isa 35 ; Isa 60 ; Isa 66 . Two differences of the utmost importance mark the new age from the present evil one – the displayed presence of the Lord in the power of His kingdom, and the enforced absence of Satan. So immense a change bespeaks the intervention of God in the person of Christ, Whose action will then have smitten the great image of Dan 2 , and replaced it by God’s kingdom, which became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. When such judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
We know from scripture that the gospel was to be preached for a testimony to all the nations; and so it has been; as it will yet be in a special form when the heavenly saints are taken on high (Rev 14:6 , Rev 14:7 ). But according to the apostles Peter and James the Just, God has now visited the Gentiles, not to fill the earth with the knowledge of Jehovah, which awaits the Messiah in the day of His power, but to take out of them a people for His name; and with this eclectic condition, both the name and nature of the church fall in; and therefore it suffers now to reign with Him in that day. Whereas these words of the prophet contemplate the wondrous change on earth, when judgement has delivered Zion, and Jehovah makes it His earthly capital for all the nations, no longer rebellious, but waiting for His law. In no sense is the vision yet accomplished. It is for the glory of the returning Jehovah-Messiah. He only will judge between the nations, and will reprove many peoples. Then, and not till then, will they abandon sword and spear for the implements of peace, and learn war no more.
To attribute all or any of this to the church now dislocates all scripture, and dissolves the special teaching of the apostles and prophets in the New Testament. For we are not of the world, as Christ is not and are now called to suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God” (Act 14:22 ). When that day comes, there is peace on earth, and no tribulation more, but righteousness reigns in manifest triumph. Our calling of God in Christ Jesus is upward, bearing Christ’s reproach. But when the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ is come (Rev 11:15 ), the destroyers of the earth are destroyed, and Israel and the nations repose under the sceptre of a King reigning in righteousness, and princes ruling in judgement (Isa 32:1 ).
Ignorance of the kingdom of the heavens, whether in its manifest form according to the prophets, when the Lord returns to reign in power and glory, or in its mysteries as now running their course while the Lord is seated on the Father’s throne and Christendom is the result – in either way ignorance of the kingdom is the common and fatal fault of most commentators. Hence they fall into the further error of confounding the kingdom with the church or assembly of God, which is fraught with evil consequences, both doctrinal and practical. Of this fanatics took advantage, or perhaps by it fell into a snare on the other side; for it is hard to say which were most astray, persecutors or persecuted. In fact, to take an instance from Protestants, whether one thinks of the wild Anabaptists who tried to set up a Zion of their own by force of arms, or of their more sensible, if not more spiritual, antagonists who put them down by fire and sword, both went on the mistaken ground of the servants in the parable of the wheat-field, who would root up the tares spite of the Saviour’s interdict, instead of leaving that work of judgement to the angels at the end of the age. The powers that be are responsible and competent to maintain order and punish evil-doers. Popery, as is notorious, has always acted, ecclesiastically, on the same error. Others, shocked by the evident mistake of Papists and Protestants alike, fell into the opposite extreme of denying to the king and the magistrates the title and duty of using the sword. All these serious aberrations of men are due to confounding what ought to be held simply but firmly, and without confusion – God’s external authority in civil government, which holds good everywhere, and His spiritual power in His assembly, the church, where alone the Spirit is present to maintain the rights of the Lord according to the written word.
Where these truths are seen, it is not merely that one stands amazed at those Calvin [Calvin Translation Society Series Isa 1 p101, 102] calls “madmen,” who torture this passage to promote anarchy, but at the Genevese chief who chides them for thinking that “it took away from the church entirely the right to use the sword,” and bringing it forward for condemning with great severity every kind of war. Certainly those Christians were inexcusably wrong who dictated to the powers that be, and interfered with their policy, either domestic or foreign. But not less in error was Calvin, who claimed for the church the right to use the sword. Mischievous idea! which denies in principle the pattern of Christ, the place of suffering holiness and love in this present evil world (1Pe 2:20 , 1Pe 2:21 ). So the citation by Calvin of Luk 22:36 in this connection is just of a piece with that which we see in Romish controversialist They are equally mistaken, from not seeing the true nature and calling of the Christian, they are equally mistaken in thinking that it is a question of acknowledging the kingly power of Christ (for He has not yet taken His own throne); they are equally mistaken in fancying we must always think of making progress, and so gradually bring in the perfection of that peaceful reign. Calvin charges it on the revolutionaries as excessive folly to imagine Christ’s kingdom in the sense of Isa 2 consummated. But was it wise in himself to think that it was even beginning? Not less unintelligent and false is his conclusion that “the fulfilment of this prophecy in its full extent must not be looked for on earth”; for it is plain and certain that its terms refer to Christ’s future kingdom on earth exclusively, and not to heaven. How important to distinguish difference of dispensation and relationship!
Take all now in its natural import,* and difficulties vanish. When judgement has done its work, “in the end of days,” the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established at the head of the mountains, and shall be lifted above the hills, and all the nations will flow unto it. Zion shall be the fountain of divine blessing in the word for all the world, and the centre to which the peoples shall gather when universal peace prevails, and Jehovah will administer justice as king over all the earth. “As is the Heavenly [Christ], such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly” (1Co 15:48 , 1Co 15:49 ) Such is our relationship and our privilege: our responsibility is inalienable and clearly laid down in the New Testament. We are not of the world, as Christ is not, and are crucified to the world, as it is to us. The contrast of this glorious scene, the Lord predicted, should go on till the end of the age. “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” Such too are the evident facts now. By-and-by, when the new age dawns under Messiah’s earthly reign (Rev 11:15 )! “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” It will be an order of things of which the world has had no experience; and if the casting away of Israel were the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? (Rom 11:15 ). The flowing of all nations unto Zion is the great change in that day, and cannot mean the gathering out of them, which grace is doing now, and scripture speaks of as the church of God.
*Those who have access to La venida del Mesias el gloria y Magestad en tres tomos, Londres, 1826, or the English translation in two vols. 1827, will read with pleasure the masterly investigation of the author, a pious Roman Catholic, in which he, by the scripture, sets aside the views which had so long reigned through the influence of Origen, Jerome, and others The reader is referred to vol. 2. P 174-190 for particular remarks on this very chapter of which a compressed sample must suffice here. “In the first place I sincerely agree with all the doctors, both Christian and Jewish, that the times of Messiah are manifestly the times spoken of in these prophecies. “It shall come to pass in the last days, that is in the time of Messiah, or of Christ. But this is very equivocal. That time according to all ancient and modern writers, and according to the fundamental principles of Christianity, is not one only, but two times infinitely distant from each other, one which is already past, but continues even until now, its effects assuredly great and admirable…another, which has not yet arrived, but which is believed, and hoped for with faith and a divine confidence…which second time would appear to be more great and admirable according to the scriptures which are manifestly directed toward this and terminate in it. This is the time of which the prophets have said so much, ‘in that day,’ ‘at that time,’ etc. This is the time of which S. Peter and S. Paul have said so much in their Epistles. And it is the time of which the Messiah Himself has said so much in parables and without them, as may be seen in the Gospels. The first time of Messiah, of which the Prophets speak, is certainly verified already; and the world has enjoyed, does enjoy, and may to its satisfaction enjoy, its admirable effects. And yet the prophecies have not been fully verified; for they embrace not only the first time of Messiah, but likewise and still more the second time, which is yet waited for. This is so evident and clear that, according to the different principles or systems, there have been derived two different conclusions; and though the one be more deadly than the other, they are both none the less for that illegitimate and false.
“First, Therefore the Messiah is not come, because the prophecies have not been accomplished.”
“Secondly, ‘Therefore the prophecies cannot be understood as they speak but in another better sense – allegorical or spiritual, in which sense they have been and are being verified in the present church’…..
“But is it very difficult to discover another conclusion conformed to Scripture? That is,
“Thirdly, ‘Therefore the prophecies of which we speak, and many others like them, which have not been verified, nor could possibly have been in the first time of the Messiah, may very well be verified in the second, which time is not less of divine faith than the first.”
After meeting the Jewish objections, as well as the traditional opposition of Christendom, the author replies to the last, which only sees in the day of His second coming a universal judgement of the dead. “But whence was this idea taken? From the holy scriptures? Certainly not, for they oppose and contradict it at every step….Therefore we may well hope without any fear that the prophecies spoken of, with countless others like them, will be fully verified according to the letter in the second time of Messiah, since in the first they could not be. When then the second time, which we all religiously believe and expect, is arrived, there shall be, among other things, primary or principal, the elevation of Mount Zion above all the mountains and hills: a manifestly figurative expression, yet admirably proper to explain, according to the scriptures, the dignity, honour and glory to which the city of David shall be lifted up … in which time consequently shall the nations and peoples flow toward the top of Mount Zion. What nations and peoples? Without doubt those who shall be left alive after the coming of the Lord, as it seems most clear there shall be such…..How is He to judge the quick if there be none? What nations and peoples? Without doubt those who remain alive after the utter ruin of the Antichrist……What nations and peoples? Without doubt those who remain alive after the stone falls on the statue; and, this being reduced to powder, another kingdom shall be formed on its ruins, incorruptible and everlasting embracing all under the whole heavens. How ominous that a Romish priest, spite of all the hindrances around him should have had an insight into the prophetic word so much beyond most Protestants.
[Note, the name of the author of the preceding quotation is Manuel Lacunza who signed himself Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra. The translator was the Rev. Edward Irving, 1792-1894. W. J. H.
Besides, according to our chapter and all prophecy, there will be a divine judgement executed on all (the Jews especially) before that. And this era of peace and blessing and Messianic rule is to be coincident with the supremacy of Israel, which is transparent in the predicted facts, and supposes a condition wholly distinct from that of the church, wherein there is neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christ is all and in all. But in that day Jehovah will make Zion His seat and centre. From that day the name of the city is Jehovah-Shammah (Eze 48:35 ). It is no longer, as now, the call of sovereign indiscriminating grace to heaven, but the establishment and display of divine government in Messiah over all the earth.
The prophet on the contrary sees in the vision the religious supremacy of Israel under Messiah and the new covenant, when they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah, and all the nations shall be gathered to it. For, needless to say, the voices of the prophets agree in one, whatever the several tones of Isaiah or Micah, of Jeremiah or Zechariah (Zec 14 ). And the latter is important in this respect, as a prediction of the new Messianic age after Christ’s return. The Lord in view of His rejection prepared the Twelve for war, not for peace meanwhile. “Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Mat 10:34 ). Those who claim to be their successors in this wholly misrepresent the Master confound the church’s place with Israel’s, shirk the fellowship of His sufferings, antedate the time of earthly peace, and deny the restoration of the kingdom to the people to whom God promised it.
It is unfounded and undiscriminating to treat this as accomplished in, or even applying to, the mission of the gospel or the calling of the church. For the gospel is the proclamation of God’s sovereign grace in Christ to save lost sinners, who thenceforth as saints suffer with Christ on earth, and wait for heavenly glory, and to reign with Him. And the church is built on the rejected but risen and glorified Christ, when the Jews disclaimed their own Messiah, and have lost meanwhile all recognition on God’s part. In the Christian accordingly there cannot be either Jew or Greek, but the new man. Christ is what all put on. By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free. It is in principle a heavenly corporation, though for the present on earth; not a mere idea, but a living body.
That which follows in Isa 2 falls in with the reference to the future blessing and glory of Israel under the new covenant, and the King Who shall reign in righteousness. For, says the prophet (v. 5), after that happy picture of the new age, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of Jehovah.” The vision of glory when the Gentiles would bow and bless Jehovah, how should it shame Judah now! Then, speaking directly to Him, he owns why Jehovah had forsaken His people, instead of setting them on high, even because they were replenished “from (or, more than) the east” with all that man covets and worships. “For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they are replenished from the east, and [full of] soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of strangers. Their land is also full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made” (vv. 6-8). Their sin was quite unpardonable, that Judah, with such glorious prospects from God’s sure word, should seek heathen superstitions, not only Gentile wealth and power, but alas! their idols also.
If their land was full of silver and gold, and no end of treasures; if it was full of horses and chariots, it was also full of idols! Oh what sin and shame! “And the mean man is bowed down, and the great man is brought low: therefore forgive them not” (v. 9), cries the indignant prophet.
Lastly, he calls on them to hide in the dust because of the day of Jehovah, which undoubtedly has not yet fallen on the pride and idolatry of man. “Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of His majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be brought low, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day” (vv. 10, 11). The passage needs only to be read in a believing spirit, in order to convince a fair mind, that neither on the one hand Nebuchadnezzar or Titus, nor on the other the gospel, has anything to do with the Lord’s advent in accomplishing the all-embracing judgement of man which is here portrayed. The true God would break down those who idolatrously bowed down. The hand of the Highest should be on all that is high and lifted up. The idols shall utterly pass away, and men go into caves and holes from before the terror of Jehovah and from the glory of His majesty when He arises to shake mightily the earth. All will be verified when Christ appears, not before. How can Christians flatter themselves that the gospel has done or can do this work, with the great majority of mankind openly idolaters, and the great majority of the baptized really so? For what is it to bow down to the mass or the crucifix, to the virgin and saints or angels?
“For there shall be a day of Jehovah of hosts upon all that is proud and haughty, and upon all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low; and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up; and upon every lofty tower, and upon every fenced wall; and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant imagery. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low: and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. And men shall go into the caves of the rocks and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Jehovah and from the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake mightily the earth. In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the caverns of the rocks, and into the clefts of the ragged rocks, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake mightily the earth” (vv. 12-21). Vain then would it be to invoke the aid of man: his day will then have ended. Jehovah in that day arises to shake terribly the earth.
How confound this with the gospel! It is not yet eternity but the age to come when the idols shall utterly pass away and Jehovah alone shall be exalted. The word, therefore, is “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (v. 22). Man* as such is not able to retain his own life-breath, still less to keep others in that day. All must manifestly hang on the sovereign pleasure of Him Whose glory will be no longer hidden, and Whose will is then to be displayed in righteousness. “That day” is the day of Jehovah. Whatever the gospel may effect for believers and it makes them meet for God’s light and heavenly glory), there can be no real deliverance for the earth and the nations, till Messiah comes again in glory, executing judgement on the quick and reigning in peace. Thus, as we see in Isa 1 that divine judgement is the revealed way in which God will restore Zion or the Jews, so does Isa 2 make it equally plain that it is at least as needful for man universally. The judgement of him and his pride and his idols will be in the day of Jehovah, in order that all the nations may flow to Zion in heart-homage, as the beginning of Isa 2 describes. The world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ will then have come (Rev 11:15 ).
*The notion that Christ is here Intended is one of those freaks of notable men which Illustrate the passage they so strangely misapplied. The LXX, strange to say, leave out the verse altogether.
The Lord, according to Heb 12:25 , is now speaking from heaven, and those who heed His voice He deigns to call holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. In the church of God national distinctions vanish even now. If we are Christ’s at all, we are members of His body, and in that day we shall reign with Him over the earth, where now we suffer with Him. Then shall go forth (not the gospel as we have it in the New Testament but) the law out of Zion and Jehovah’s word from Jerusalem: no longer will it be on earth that “through Him (Christ) we both (Jew and Gentile) have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph 2:18 ).
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 2:1
1The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Isa 2:1 It is uncertain why Isaiah’s messages are described as
1. vision, Isa 1:1; Isa 29:7 (BDB 302, cf. Mic 3:6)
2. he saw, Isa 1:1; Isa 2:1; Isa 13:1; Isa 26:11; Isa 33:17; Isa 48:6; Isa 57:8 (cf. Mic 1:1)
This is the mystery of revelation. It comes in different ways to different biblical authors (visions, dreams, theophanies, words, etc.). Moderns do not know how much freedom the individual writers (authors, editors, compilers) had to structure and present God’s message. They obviously used their own language skills and vocabularies. Even without a full and complete understanding of the way revelation works, the concept is crucial! These are God’s messages given through a historically conditioned person, to a particular time and group, yet they are relevant for all people in all times! The key for a proper interpretation is that the intent of an original inspired author must be the criteria for interpretation (one meaning but many significances/applications).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
The word that = That which. Compare Mic 4:1-3, written seventeen years later.
saw = saw in vision See note on Isa 1:1.
concerning Judah, &c. The repetition of Isa 1:1 shows that Isa 1is to be regarded as a summary Introduction to the whole book,
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 2
Now chapter 2 is introduced again.
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem ( Isa 2:1 ).
And now God takes him off to the future.
And it shall come to pass in the last days [or in the latter days], that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow into it ( Isa 2:2 ).
So Isaiah goes from the dark, bleak history and now he jumps forward to a day yet future when Jesus Christ the Messiah comes and establishes the kingdom. And the Jews, as the scripture said, will look upon Him whom they have pierced, and they will recognize Him and they will weep over Him. Weep over their national blindness and their failure to recognize that He was their Messiah. And He will establish His kingdom there on the top of the mountains in Jerusalem.
Traditionally, it is felt that the top of Mount Zion will be the place of the throne of Jesus Christ in the Kingdom Age. And this is going ahead now to the Kingdom Age. All nations show flow unto it.
And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he shall teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem ( Isa 2:3 ).
So the Bible tells us in other passages that the kings of the earth will come to Jerusalem to offer their gifts unto the Lord and to just have celebrations there.
Now who are the kings of the earth that are referred to here? Now you’re looking at King Charles. In Revelation, chapter 1, as he speaks of Jesus Christ he said, “Unto Him who loved us, and gave himself for us and hath made us unto our God kings and priests,” and we shall reign with Him on the earth. To the church he said, “He that overcometh will I grant that he shall sit with Me on the throne of My kingdom, even as I have sat down at the throne of my Father’s kingdom. And they shall rule over the earth with a rod of iron.” And then in Revelation chapter 5, as the lamb takes the scroll out of the right hand of Him who is sitting upon the throne when the prayers of the saints are offered before the throne of God, the golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints they sang a new song saying, “Worthy is the lamb to take the scroll and loose the seals, for He was slain and He has redeemed us by His blood out of all the nations, tribes, tongues and people and hath made us unto our God kings and priests and we shall reign with Him upon the earth.”
So actually, it’s talking about you when it says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the God of Jacob and He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths.” Wouldn’t it be exciting to go to Jerusalem and just sit down and let Jesus teach us for a while? You know that sounds so exciting to me. And that’s just thrilling to me the concept and the whole idea to realize that we’ll be having annual trips to Jerusalem just to sit there and to listen to the Lord expound the love, and the grace, and the goodness of God unto us. The law of the Lord. He will teach us of His ways. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD ( Isa 2:4-5 ).
Looking forward to that glorious day when Jesus is reigning and the military budgets are used for agricultural development, beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Last year over one trillion dollars were spent throughout the world forging swords and spears, weapons of war. Military budgets of the world totaled over a trillion dollars last year, and this year we’re expanding our military budget. There are many who are warning that war is imminent. I have a personal friend who is a high-ranking officer who has kept in touch with me. He’s back in the Pentagon right now going through briefings. And he said, “Chuck, we’ve never been closer to war before. We’re on the verge.” And he said, “Everybody is scared.”
But a day is coming when no one is going to have to fear war anymore. We’re not gonna have to fear mass destruction. You’re not going to have to fear the exotic poison gases, neutron, hydrogen bombs. They’ll study war no more; the war colleges will all be closed. The Lord will reign. Now this is the blessing that is to come, but before the blessing can come there is going to be some rough times.
Therefore thou has forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made ( Isa 2:6-8 ):
So the idea of man worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator is brought up here. Men worshipping the works of their own hands more than the Creator. What an apt description of humanism. And really, the materialism of the present day where man has placed his value upon the material objects, the works of his own hands rather than upon the Lord. God speaks of this time.
And the mean man bows down, and the great man humbles himself: therefore forgive them not. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low ( Isa 2:9-12 ):
Now this could very well be referring to the time after the exodus of the church, for when the church makes its exodus out of the world, it’s gonna be a time of great world prosperity, for a time. At the beginning of the reign of the man of sin, people are gonna be singing, “Happy days are here again,” because this man is gonna come in with a program of peace and of economic prosperity, and they will move in to take the wealth of the church that has departed. So they’re gonna have this twenty acres and these buildings, my house, my car. They can have it all. And suddenly they’re gonna have all this extra thrown in to the whole economy and you won’t have the housing shortage in Orange County. There will be a lot of empty houses for people to move into. People can grab a second car, and they’re going to really get into a real materialistic kick because of all of these things that have been left. But then, after three and a half years, then God is gonna bring down the proud; God is gonna begin to smite the earth.
For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and they will be brought low; and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, those that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon the pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD ( Isa 2:12-19 ),
Remember in Revelation in the sixth seal it said and they cry unto the rocks and the mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the Lamb, for the day of His wrath has come and who shall be able to stand”? Going into the holes of the rocks and the caves of the earth, for the fear of the Lord.
and for the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake terribly the eaRuth ( Isa 2:19 ).
God said, “Once more I’m gonna shake this earth until everything that can be shaken shall be shaken until only that which cannot be shaken shall remain.” And all of these lofty works of man… Man, I wouldn’t want to be in downtown Los Angeles when this shaking takes place; all of these lofty works of man brought low.
In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he arises to shake terribly the eaRuth ( Isa 2:20-21 ).
You read how that in Athens and Italy there after the earthquakes the people were living outside. They were afraid to go back into the houses because of the shaking and all. It would be the same experience only on a worldwide basis where people will be afraid to move back in the houses. And they would get a cave or something to live in for a while for fear of the shaking that is taking place as God once more shakes the earth terribly.
Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils ( Isa 2:22 ):
In other words, don’t trust in man. He has to breathe just like you do. Better to trust in God and put your confidence in Him.
for wherein is man to be accounted of? ( Isa 2:22 ) “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Isa 2:1-2. The word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORDS house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
What grand hopes are kindled in our bosoms by words like these. The church has always been as a city set on a hill that cannot be hid, but still she has not been known in all parts of the world, and she has never been known with that universal eminence which attaches to the things of this world the things of pomp and show. But the day shall come when she shall be the highest of the high. Her mountain shall be established on the tops of the mountains, when she shall be best known of all the known, and shall become what she was always meant to be the metropolis of the whole world, the center to which all kindreds shall flow. Not the Jews alone shall then possess the oracles of God, but all nations shall flow unto it.
Isa 2:3. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
In these happy days which have, in a measure, begun, but which in their fullness have not yet dawned upon us, the Spirit of the Lord will work in the hearts of multitudes of men a desire after God. They will be willing to worship him: they will say, Let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah: they will be anxious to learn what he would teach. This shall be the reason why they go, He will teach us of his ways. They shall not only wish to learn, but be quick to practice: and we will walk in his paths. Sometimes we have to complain of the masses of mankind forsaking the worship of God altogether; and too often those that together with some inferior motive, not that they may be taught of God; and even some that are, in a manner, taught, are slow to obey. The Lord teaches them by his ministers but they do not walk in his paths. Blessed days when all this shall be reversed, and the multitudes shall flock to the church and to the Christ!
Isa 2:4. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
They shall not save their weapons for future use, or believe in the theory that the best way to preserve peace is to be prepared for war; but they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and turn their spears into pruninghooks. The spirit which created war shall be conquered. Whence wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts? When lust and envy and hatred shall be dethroned and the spirit of Christ shall be dominant over the world, then shall they learn war no more. O happy day! O long-expected day begin! Let each one of us labour mightily according as the Spirit worketh in us to bring about a consummation so devoutly to be wished.
Isa 2:5. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
The Jew shall come. Long rejecting the Messiah, yet shall he with the Gentile, and walk in the light of Jehovah. Now the theme changes. We are led to see why it is that a happy state of things does not obtain at this moment, and did not obtain in the land of Judah. Sin sin is the cause of the mischief idolatry the setting up of something in the place of God.
Isa 2:6. Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.
The nations then had their soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and the people of God ought not so to have degraded themselves, but they did, and therefore they provoked him, and they sought out foreigners and entered into league with them, whereas the Lord had bidden them be a people separate unto himself. It always goes ill with those who profess to be Gods people when they forget their separated character and join with the world.
Isa 2:7-8. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: Their land also is full of idols;
How these things generally go together. If a nation prospers and gets wealthy, it is so apt to seek for itself external worship of a gaudy kind. It must then have its ritualism and its idols, for if men have their gold and have their chariots, the simple worship of the unseen God seems to be beneath the dignity of their taste.
Isa 2:8-9. They worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not.
Mark the indignant spirit of the prophet, as if he had been an Elias, or had the mind of a John Knox of later days. It seemed as if he could not ask God to forgive such a stupendous folly as the setting up visible objects of worship, and the turning away from the true invisible God. O idolatry, what an accursed sin thou art, and how rampant art thou in this land at this day!
Isa 2:10-12. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:
Whatever God does or does not do, there is one role of his procedure from which he never deviates, namely, to cast down the proud and those who boast themselves, from their high places. He condescends to the humble, and he hath a tender eye to the contrite, but wherever man, the creature, dares to think himself great, God will bare his arm to overthrow him, or puff at him for a puff will do it and he shall pass away.
Isa 2:13-16. And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, And upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, And upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures.
No matter what it is that man sets up, however good or great, if he dares to bring it into competition with God, Gods hand is against him, and he will break it in pieces. Whenever God comes out of his secret place this is always the end of it. He came against Babylon and against Nineveh. Ay, ask the traveler who has wonderingly descended into those vast mounds, Where are those mighty monarchies now? Where is the power of Sennacherib and where the might of Nebuchadnezzar? They have gone. The dust is their sole monument. Turn ye, in later days to the great power of Rome, and as one walks through Some, that vast mausoleum of an empire, where one treads, at every step, upon an empires dust what think ye but that God has broken the iron kingdom, and made what seemed to be an omnipotent power to pass away from off the face of the earth?
Woe unto all that is great and all that is high and all that exalts itself above God. Whether a temporal power, or a spiritual, it shall pass away like a dream of the night, or a vision of the air, for the Lord is, and all else is nothing.
Isa 2:17-20. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted is that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;
The worshipper of idols shall be ashamed of them. The precious metal shall not save them the work of art for which so many plead. It is true the thing is defiling and idolatrous, say come, but look at the skill, the taste, the handicraft, the precious metal. When God makes bare his arm, they shall fling even gold and silver to the moles and to the bats.
Isa 2:21-22. To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?
What a rebuke this is to kingcraft and to priestcraft especially. Wherein is he to be accounted of? Ye may lay what hands ye will on him, and ye may gird him with what robes ye please, and ye may pour upon him your anointing oil and your sacred chrisms; but what is he, after all, but a man whose breath is in his nostrils? Cease ye from him, for wherein is he to be accounted of?
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Isa 2:1-4
This chapter has three paragraphs. The first (Isa 2:1-4) speaks of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God from Mount Zion by God himself in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; the second (Isa 2:5-11) is a call for apostate Israel to repent and heed the word of God; and the third (Isa 2:12-22) reveals the inevitability of the “Day of Jehovah,” namely the Great and final judgment identified with the second advent of the Son of God.
Isa 2:1-4
“The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established upon the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways; and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And he will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
This is one of the most important passages in the Word of God, so important, in fact, that God gave the same message through two different prophets. Mic 4:1-3 has this:
“But in the latter days, it shall come to pass, that the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow into it. And many nations shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem; and he will judge between many peoples, and will decide concerning strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
It is a great hoax among critical commentators in this era of Biblical exegesis to engage in very erudite and scholarly guessing as to who copied whom, whenever very similar, or identical passages are encountered. To us, such scholarly doodlings are ridiculous. All such allegations are founded on the incredible proposition that God could never have given the same message to more than one prophet. Where is any authority for a canard like that? Jesus gave identical, or nearly identical, teachings on many occasions, as witnessed by the two records of the Lord’s prayer in Matthew and in Luke, and also his repeated prophecies of his Passion. As An example of the critical comment offered on passages like this, we cite the words of Rawlinson:
“The resemblance of this prophecy to Mic 4:1-3 is so close as to necessitate the conclusion that either one of the two prophets copied from the other or that both copied from an earlier document.
The tremendous importance of these passages in Micah and Isaiah is such that there cannot possibly be any wonder that God gave the same message twice. In the first place, this teaching is not talking about the earthly Jerusalem at all, but the “heavenly Jerusalem” which is our mother (Gal 4:26). God simply was not speaking of the literal Jerusalem, nor of the Law of Moses in any sense whatever in this passage. Moses’ law never went forth from Jerusalem, but from Sinai; and “many peoples” have never flowed unto the literal Jerusalem, but unto the spiritual Jerusalem which is Mount Zion (Heb 12:22).
That God Himself actually revealed this prophecy to Isaiah is affirmed in Isa 2:1, and no believer has a right to understand it any other way.
“It shall come to pass in the latter days …” “Whenever the latter times are mentioned in Scripture, the times of the Messiah are always meant; and, with regard to this passage, nothing could be more clear and certain.
It is significant that here is revealed the earthly center from which the true authority would be issued, that being here designated as Jerusalem, and not Rome, Salt Lake City, Boston, or any other “source” of true religion.
“Jehovah’s house shall be established …” This is not a reference to the Jewish temple, but to the Church of Jesus Christ. As an apostle expressed it, addressing a faithful church, “Ye are the temple of God” (1Co 3:16). Other passages that identify God’s “house” are Heb 12:18-23,1Ti 3:5.
Perhaps the most difficult portion of this prophecy to understand is the last portion of it which speaks of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, which is often misunderstood to teach that war shall pass away as an instrument of national policy and that universal peace on earth shall prevail. This is totally in error. Christ himself taught that “there shall be wars and rumors of wars” throughout the current dispensation” (Mat 24:6). What we actually have, therefore, is a statement of the way it will be among the citizens of the kingdom of God, or the church of Messiah.
Here the prophet is certainly not speaking of the world, for its peoples will war continually, but rather of the all nations and many peoples who will come to Jehovah’s house. He is describing the citizens of the new kingdom.
The fulfillment of this prophecy is seen in the general practice of believers in all generations. Except for the example of the apostate Medieval church’s acceptance of war as an instrument used to further their secular ends, God’s people have consistently rejected war as an instrument of evangelism or for any other purpose. This is a sure indication that denies authenticity, in the sight of Christ, to the followers of Mohammed.
Homer Hailey’s writing on the subject of the swords and plowshares is by far the best that we have encountered on this subject. The new kingdom would not be extended or defended by the weapons of carnal warfare’ because the apostle Paul gave us a list of our spiritual weapons in Ephesians 6.
Another most important teaching of these verses is the call of the Gentiles to be co-members with the old Israel in the new kingdom of God which was announced by John the Baptist in Matthew 3. This is the specific teaching of verse 3 in this chapter (above).
An example of the teaching of Millennialists is the following: “All will be governed by Christ’s judicial decision; weapons of war will be converted to tools of peace; the Millennial kingdom will be a warless society.
All such postulations are founded upon a mistaken view of the Millennium, which contrary to popular superstition has already been in progress ever since the resurrection of Christ. The present dispensation is, without doubt, the Millennium of Scripture; and, as we learn from the Book of Revelation, it is not a time of universal peace, but of conflict. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse give the true picture of this Millennium. The White Horse indeed continually goes forth conquering and to conquer in the preaching of the Gospel; but he was followed by the Red Horse of war and carnal conflict. Contrary to the popular current myth, the sacred prophecy did not depict that Red Horse as disappearing from history, but as going all the way to the end, followed by the Black Horse of famine and the Pale Horse of death.
Of course, we are aware of the urgent postulations of critical enemies of the Bible who, because of their a priori dictum that the Messianic hope did not enter the minds of Jewish prophets until after the exile, are determined not to allow the true interpretation of countless Old Testament prophecies that contradict their silly rules. The ultimate hope of the heavenly Messiah was not invented by post-exilic prophets. It shines in the great Protoevangelium of Gen 3:15, in the prophecy of Jacob that the scepter should not depart from Judah until the coming of Shiloh (Gen 49:10), and in that magnificent prophecy of Mic 5:2 which speaks of that great Ruler of Israel “whose goings forth have been from of old, even from everlasting!” Pray tell, WHO in heaven and earth could this Ruler be if not the Messiah. NO! As Eiselen pointed out, “One cannot escape the suspicion that specific objections (to prophecies like these we have just cited and to many others in Isaiah…J.B.C.) are meant simply to bolster up the assumption urged by many scholars that the pre-exilic age did not know any Messianic hope.” Of course, this is a profound fact; and, unless one wishes to be deceived, his first duty is to reject the arbitrary, irresponsible, and unbelieving rules of exegesis laid down by the critical enemies of Christianity.
All of the fog about multiple Isaiah’s and the ridiculous late-dating of various chapters in this prophecy are nothing at all except the efforts of unbelievers to identify the genuine prophecies of Isaiah with their post-exilic nonsense about the origin of Messianic Hope, which was most certainly known by Moses in his great prophecy of” A PROPHET LIKE UNTO ME.”
That the eighth-century Isaiah did indeed prophecy repeatedly of the Holy Messiah is abundantly testified in the New Testament, where our Lord and the New Testament writers quoted Isaiah, duly crediting him with literally dozens of quotations! One of the great joys which we unhesitatingly promise believers is the study of many of those wonderful Messianic prophecies in this incredibly beautiful prophecy.
Isa 2:1-2 THE TIME: In the latter days of Judah and Jerusalem as the exclusive covenant people of God. Latter days does not refer to the end of time or the Second Advent of Christ or the so-called millenium. The N.T. definitely and clearly applies the phrase latter days to that period of time which began to run its course with the first advent of Christ (Cf. Act 2:17 with Joe 2:28; Heb 1:2; Jas 5:3; 1Pe 1:5; 1Pe 1:20; 2Pe 3:3 and 1Jn 2:18). Literally the phrase is, the last parts of the days, and means, the end of the ages (Cf. 1Co 10:11). So the Lords house is to be established in its glorified and pre-eminent state in the last parts of the days of the Jewish Dispensation. In these last days of Judah, Herod the Great was King and he was the first foreigner ever to be King over Judah. This is a fulfillment of Gen 49:10, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the rulers staff from between his feet, until Shiloh (Christ) come; and unto Him shall the obedience of the people be. It is not the present upon which the eyes of the Israelites are to be directed, but a time which is the end or goal of the contemporary course of events, when the Messiah will have come and the breach which sin had introduced between man and God will be healed (Cf. Daniel, chapter 9). The figure of Zion being exalted above the hills is significant. At the time when Isaiah spoke, the very reverse was the case-many other hills were higher than Zion (Cf. Psa 68:16). The Temple in Isaiahs day was situated on Zion, but the false gods had their mountains as well: the Captiol, Olympus, Albordash, Meru, and Zaphon. But Zion, which, in Isaiahs day and up to Christ, was comparatively insignificant will one day surpass all others. Even Sinai, the mount of law, will recede into the background, for the new covenant is superior to the old. This is the meaning of Heb 12:18-24 where Sinai represents the old covenant and Zion represents the new covenant, or the church. See also Dan 2:35; Dan 2:44; Jer 31:12 a; Jer 51:44.
Isa 2:2 THE SCOPE: All peoples! No longer exclusively to the Jews. A constant accession of converts streaming, (flowing) from all parts of the world upward to Gods house. This high and pre-eminent mount (Zion-the church) is to serve as a unifying force for the whole world. It is to be a reversal of the dispersion (Babel). (Cf. Mat 8:10-11; Luk 13:29; Joh 10:16; Act 13:44-47, etc.).
Isa 2:3 THE NATURE: Enlightment! The law here is not the law of Moses for that went forth from Sinai. It is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It is the perfect law of liberty. It is the word of the Lord that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in Christs name beginning from Jerusalem (Cf. Luk 24:47). It will be missionary and evangelistic! Many people will go and say, Come ye . . . No national or racial boundaries. It will be didactic and doctrinal. Those who come to it will necessarily be taught His way. As a consequence of being taught, men will want to walk in Gods way. True doctrine places within ones heart the desire to walk in the law of God. Truth leads to godliness, and when one has been truly instructed, he will want to do Gods will. One must be instructed first before he can walk in Gods way. Doctrine and ethics must go hand in hand. There can be no right obedience nor any right worship, until first one has learned of God (Cf. Heb 8:8-13; Act 20:32; Tit 2:11-15; Joh 6:44-46). It is through the church that the manifold wisdom of God is to be declared (Eph 3:10). The churchs work is to produce a ministry for evangelizing and edifying (Eph 4:11-16). Gods Word is the only source and foundation of truth. Those who preach must preach the Word! This passage teaches that what unbelievers need above all else is teaching which is indoctrination. The missionary and evangelistic activity of the church must be doctrinal in character. The great need of the world is the preaching of revealed absolutes (restrictive and difficult though it may be). The world does not need speculative and theoretical philosophies and theologies of men. There will be some who will reject His Way (Cf. Jer 6:16-21; Isa 42:24; Act 9:2, etc.).
Isa 2:4 THE RESULTS: Peace! is the result of this establishing of the Lords house. When men are brought into the kingdom of God, the church, they are brought to peace-peace with God and peace with their fellow citizens of the kingdom (Cf. Eph 2:11-22; Col 3:15; Joh 14:27; Joh 16:33; Act 10:36; Rom 14:17, etc.). It does not necessarily demand the cessation of all literal human or physical war for the fulfillment of this prophecy. There will be war between human beings as long as there are unregenerate people. But if all men knew and did the will of God war would cease. Peace comes through knowing and doing (voluntarily, not by force) the will of God. There can not be war in the kingdom of God, the church, for it is recreated in the image of God and knows no man anymore after a human (unregenerate) point of view (Cf. 2Co 5:16-21). If the peace of Christ rules in our hearts (Col 3:15), this will arbitrate any disagreement we might have as Christians (Cf. 1Co 5:9 to 1Co 6:8). The Christian, if possible, so far as it depends upon him, must live peaceably with all (Rom 12:18). When the exalted, universal house of the Lord is established and people are so taught His Way that they want to walk in it, the result will be peace and productivity. The instruments of their bodies, the talents they have, formerly used for unrighteousness, will now be beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks and used for productive profitable ends (glorifying God and serving others) (Cf. Rom 6:12-23).
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Following this broad statement of the case between Jehovah and His people, we have the prophet’s great appeal to them. The first part constitutes a vision of the latter days, that condition toward which judgment is to proceed. The Lord’s house is established at the center of the national life. His law proceeds from Zion to the peoples of the earth. and the issue is peace.
The prevalent conditions are seen in the light of that latter day, and the prophet appeals to the people to walk in that light. In burning words he describes these evil conditions. The people have become contaminated with the surrounding nations. They are wealthy, and prosperous in all material things. They are steeped in idolatry, and consequently human life, both low and high, is degraded. In order to realize the vision of the latter days, Jehovah will visit His people in judgment. His terror is described in itself and in its operation. As He goes forth in judgment men of all classes are subdued and bend before Him, and the wholesale destruction of idols follows. This description of prevalent corruption and judgment ends with another appeal that it cease.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
a Vision of World Peace
Isa 2:1-11
This and the four following chapters must be classed together as a distinct portion of this book, belonging to the earliest years of Isaiahs ministry. Their date is 735 b.c.; about the time of the accession of Ahaz to the throne. Isa 2:2-4 are evidently an ancient prophecy by some unknown seer, for Micah also quotes it. This section presents a fair vision of the future, when the beloved city must become the center of the religious life of the world, the seat of the theocracy, the burning nucleus of a reign of love and peace. We cherish this ancient prophecy as our guiding star in the present storm. But it can be realized only when the Son of God, riding forth on His white horse, has subdued His enemies. Then Rev 21:1-27 and Rev 22:1-21 will fulfill this ancient dream. The contrast between the ideal city and the actual is terrible, Isa 2:6-9. But let us not despair. The exalted Lord, from the right hand of power, is hastening the coming of the day of God.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
EXPOSITORY NOTES ON
THE PROPHET ISAIAH
By
Harry A. Ironside, Litt.D.
Copyright @ 1952
edited for 3BSB by Baptist Bible Believer in the spirit of the Colportage ministry of a century ago
ISAIAH CHAPTER TWO
ZION’S FUTURE GLORY
“The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord” (verses 1-5).
THE four chapters that now demand our attention form a connected discourse, a soul-stirring message addressed to Judah and Jerusalem, at a time unspecified. The parable of the vineyard in chapter five is a lovely, yet solemn epitome of it all, and forms really the prophet’s text, that which precedes being introductory, and what follows is a fitting conclusion, pronouncing the woes of the Lord upon the vine that brought forth but wild grapes.
The opening verses of chapter two (verses 2-4) are almost identical with those of Mic 4:1-3. There is no need to suppose plagiarism or a scribe’s blunder, in transferring the words of one prophet to the book of another. Rather is it a blessed evidence that one Spirit inspired each speaker, or writer. The double testimony is but added assurance that the thing spoken cannot fail.
It tells in language too plain to be misunderstood, that in the last days GOD will again take up His ancient people, Israel, restoring them to their land, and making Jerusalem His throne-city, from which His laws will go forth to the ends of the earth. “The mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills.”
The mountain is the city itself. This is a common prophetic symbol. Mountains signify governments and throne-cities; and Jerusalem will be “the city of the great King,” and “all nations shall flow unto it.” This will be fulfilled literally in the coming age, after GOD’s present work of grace has come to an end.
He is now, as James points out in Act 15:14, visiting the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His Name. But when this special work is completed He will “build again the tabernacle of David,” and through restored Israel, bless all the nations. Then will be the time when “Many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.” For in that day of His power, the law will go forth from Zion and His word from Jerusalem.
He will rule all the nations in equity and put down every opposing thing.
It is not in this dispensation that Israel will thus be saved, and, through them, the nations brought to own Immanuel’s sway. Therefore, those who expect to see all wars ended and righteousness everywhere established in this age are doomed to bitter disappointment.
It is not now, while the King is sitting as the earth’s rejected One upon His Father’s throne, that the nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks.” But when He returns to this world and takes His own throne – the throne of His father, David – then “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
It is in view of this glorious fulfillment of Israel’s Messianic hopes that the exhortation of verse 5 comes in, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” The house of Jacob, so long blinded because of their rejection of CHRIST when He came the first time, will then have their eyes opened to see the light which has been hidden from them.
Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: and the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low: and upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up, and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? (verses 6-22).
It is very evident that the verses we have been considering are parenthetical, for there is no apparent connection between verse 6 and what has gone before. But if this verse be read as immediately following the last verse of the first chapter it fits perfectly. Wealth and luxury will not avail to avert the wretchedness that is to be the portion of all who forsake the Lord and turn aside to false gods who are powerless to deliver those who put their trust in them.
In verses 10-22 the prophet speaks of the Day of the Lord when GOD shall arise in His might and His indignation to deal with wickedness and corruption wherever found. As depicted in the judgment of the sixth seal in Revelation 6, men may seek to enter into the rocks and hide in the ground, but their hope of escaping the fierce anger of the Lord will be in vain, for “the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (verse 11).
The day of the Lord is in contrast to the day of man, this present evil age when GOD is permitting men to take their own way and to try out their own plans independently of His authority. In that coming day high and low, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, all alike shall be brought low before the GOD they have defied or forgotten.
That judgment will be like a tremendous storm or a forest fire sweeping over the mountains of Lebanon, devouring the great cedars and oaks and destroying lesser trees of the forest, then reaching down the mountain slopes and consuming the farmhouses and villages and even spreading across the plains to the shipping ports, destroying all the ships of Tarshish and all objects of art, for GOD has decreed that “the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (verse 17).
All that men have put in the place of GOD shall be abolished, and in their terror men shall hide in the holes of the rocks and in the caves of the earth, hoping thereby to find shelter from the wrath of an offended GOD (verse 19).
Casting away all in which they have trusted vainly, they will find themselves bereft of all confidence and will seek shelter in vain in the most inaccessible places as they endeavor to flee from the majestic glory of the Lord “when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth” (verse 21). Such will be the end of man’s boasted civilization, of his effort to make this world a place of rest and security while ignoring the claims of Him who created all things for His own glory.
And so the section closes with the solemn admonition: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (verse 22).
~ end of chapter 2 ~
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Isa 2:2
When Christ came and took possession of His own house, it could not be but that some great changes would take place in its economy and its condition. And such there were. It was exalted and established above all earthly power, and became a refuge and home for all ages. It remained what it had been before, a Church, in its inward and characteristic structure the same; but it became what it had never been before, or only in a partial measure in the time of David and some other princes, and that in type of what was to come,-it became an imperial Church. It was the head of an empire.
I. When our Lord was ascending, He said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven, and in earth.” We believe in His power in heaven; but, strange to say, it is usual with us to grudge Him His power upon earth. He is the invisible King of a visible kingdom; for it does not at all follow, because a monarch is withdrawn from view, that therefore His kingdom must cease to be a fact in the face of day also.
II. Who are spoken of as the rulers in the kingdom, Christ’s viceroys? The twelve Apostles, and first of all Peter. Their authority was equal to that of Him who appointed them. “He that receiveth you,” He saith, “receiveth Me.” Nay, it would seem as if their authority were even greater than that which it pleased our Lord to possess in the days of His flesh; for whereas He breathed on them, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” He had formerly said, “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven Him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven Him.”
III. The only question that can here arise is this: whether this imperial power was vested only in the twelve Apostles, or in others besides and after them? I answer: (1) We must conclude that the power was vested in others also, from the size of the empire; for a few persons, though inspired, cannot be supposed to have been equal to the care of all the churches. (2) Again, it is expressly said, that the Church is to last to the end of time, and the gates of hell are to fail in their warfare against it. But the Apostles were soon cut off; therefore the Church’s power was vested in others besides the Apostles. (3) The promise was neither made nor fulfilled exactly to the twelve Apostles; one of them fell, and another took his place. (4) No honours which were accorded to the Apostles were accorded to them for their own sake, or were, strictly speaking, vested in them; they were theirs only as being instruments of Him who, being “immortal, invisible,” governs His kingdom in every age in His own way; the one Master, the one Lord, the one Teacher, the one Priest, alone glorified in all His saints, while they live and when they die. Whatever honours then and powers the Apostles possessed needed not to die with them, for they never had really belonged to them.
J. H. Newman, Sermons on Subjects of the Day, p. 26.
References: Isa 2:2.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 249. Isa 2:3.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 272.
Isa 2:4
We are asked how, with such passages written in sunbeams in the Book which we hold to be divine, we can regard with any complacency the acts and character of a warrior.
I. The old prophet, it is often said, was anticipating the Gospel or Christian age of the world, and was pointing out what ought to be its condition always, what some day will be actually its condition. I do not object to this statement, except for being too vague. The words, “He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people,” cannot be diluted into the phrase, “The pure and benign doctrines of the Gospel or of Christianity shall be diffused over the world.” They speak not of Christianity, but of Christ; not of a doctrine, but of a King. The language which describes Him here does not suggest, first of all, an image of tranquillity and peace. “He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people;” thus is He represented to us who, we believe, took upon Him the form of a servant, and was meek and lowly of heart. If, then, we make Christ our standard, we must honour any man who acknowledged right, who, we are confident, was a just man. It has been said that this sense of right and order is emphatically the quality of a soldier; and the consequence from it seems to be that the discipline and the character which is moulded by it deserve not our reprobation, but our admiration and imitation, because we are Christian men.
II. It is the next clause of the text, however, which is most frequently in people’s mouths. “Observe,” it is said, “how strong the words are. It is not that swords shall be thrown aside for plough-shares, or spears for pruning-hooks; the first are to be changed into the last, there being no use for them in their original shape.” Then it would seem to follow that the material of which the peaceful instruments are made is the very same of which the warlike instruments were made-not the first of iron, and the other of some feeble and more flexible substance. Till, then, all the energies of war are faithfully represented in the acts and services of peace, the prophecy is not fulfilled.
III. But it is written further, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” etc. Observe that when the prophet says, “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” he clearly assumes that there shall be distinct nations in the most perfect condition of society which can be conceived of. The distinctness of his own nation had been the assurance to him that God had chosen him and his fathers, that He Himself was in the midst of them. He longed for a time when each nation should have the same stable ground for its existence, when each should feel that the God of the whole earth was its God. Therefore let us be sure that if we would ever see a real family of nations, such as the prophets believed would one day emerge out of the chaos they saw around them-a family of nations which shall own God as their Father, and Christ as their Elder Brother-this must come from each nation maintaining its own integrity and unity.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons on the Sabbath Day, p. 78.
References: Isa 2:4.-H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2188; B. Jowett, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 177. Isa 2:5.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ix., p. 280; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 340; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 263; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 216; H. P. Liddon, Old Testament Outlines, p. 167.
Isa 2:11
I. In the day of judgment will be fulfilled, once and for ever, all the sayings and prophecies of our Lord and His Apostles concerning the exaltation of the lowly and the humiliation of the high and lofty ones. Recollect what are the things which we naturally most admire in this world, and see if they will not one and all come to an end in that day. (1) “All cedars of Lebanon which are high and lifted up,” that is, the great and high-born persons, to whom God has given a place in the world above others. (2) “The high mountains and the hills that are lifted up.” All this show of visible glories will have an end; and so will the kingdoms and empires, the companies and cities of men, to which in Scripture these mountains are compared. (3) In the next sentence the prophet passes from the creations of God to those of men: from the trees and mountains to “high towers and fenced walls,” to the “ships of Tarshish and to pleasant pictures,” i.e., to all those works and contrivances which we most admire when they belong to others, and on which, being our own, we are most tempted to rely. All these things the prophet speaks of, to warn us that the day of the Lord of hosts is fast coming upon them; that day which will put an end to them all.
II. Consider how the poor and lowly will be exalted in that day, if they be poor and lowly in heart. The great pattern and example of God’s favour to the poor, towards which all eyes and hearts will be drawn, will be the appearance of the lowly Son of Mary, of Him who had not where to lay His Head, the rejected, the mocked, the scourged and crucified One, upon His throne of glory, judging the world. We shall see “all things put under Him” who was a “very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people.” And together with Him we shall see His saints crowned and glorious. There will be a great multitude of poor persons, such as Lazarus in the parable, who lived and died unknown among men, slighted, perhaps ill-used, by those who were most bound to help them; but because they had faith and patience and obedience, Christ will own them in that day as His own members, His own poor.
J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Advent to Christmas Eve, p. 279.
Isa 2:12
Party spirit discomfited by Christ’s advent.
I. In every age in which religion has not been utterly disregarded, perhaps even when it has been practically set aside by the great majority of men, there is usually some one strong tendency at work, which either divides into two great portions the minds of the more serious and reflecting, or at least colours and designates a deeper and more essential division. No one will deny that in our own time, and especially in the Universities, a division of this kind into the main directions and tendencies of religious opinions does manifestly exist. The serious and earnest are met by a strong temptation to throw themselves into one or other of these schools or parties in religion, which appear to be alone deeply engaged in the conflicts of the faith on earth.
II. Consider what must be the consequence of the habit of early partisanship. (1) Be assured that no one set of opinions, no one body of teachers, is or can be in possession of the whole truth. He who so allies himself with one party, in the warfare of religious opinion, as to make its cause, as a party, his own, is quite sure, whichever be his side, to be fighting in the end against some portion of God’s truth, and in behalf of some portion, whether less or greater, of that error which the enemy, while men slept, has sown amongst it. (2) Christian candour and Christian charity can scarcely co-exist, even for a time, with a spirit of decided partisanship.
III. Let the text recall our thoughts to a coming day, when the spirit of religious partisanship, like every other offspring of human pride, shall be subjected to the searching light of the day of the Lord of hosts. That day shall be upon everything that is lofty and lifted up, and shall bring it low. And is not this the character of every human party, of every human system, whether in things divine or earthly? Think what the day of the Lord will be to him who has disputed about religion without its entering into his soul; who has done battle for what he called the truth, instead of opening the windows of his own heart to let it fully in; who has argued about God’s grace, and the means and channels of its effectual working, instead of being himself, in will and life and character, transformed by its renewing.
C. J. Vaughan, Nine Sermons in the Chapel of Harrow School, p. 25.
Scepticism discomfited by Christ’s advent.
I. Among the causes of the spirit of religious scepticism, there is (1) an early habit of spiritual negligence; (2) a state of exaggerated and credulous belief.
II. Consider the inseparable consequences of such a state, whatever be the peculiar causes out of which it springs. (1) He who is in suspense about the truth of the Gospel cannot pray. He that cometh to God must believe that He is. He who feels that he has sinned and that God is holy knows that he needs a mediator and he that would trust in a mediator must believe that He is. (2) He cannot resist sin. He who is in suspense about the truth of Christ’s Gospel is as weak as he who denies it-as weak, yea, weaker. For the other knows that he is thrown upon the resources of his own unaided strength, and he summons them all together for his support. He can take the shield of pride, and the helmet of self-confidence, and the sword of reason; and with these, within their own narrow limits, he can go forth and conquer. But the man who doubts-who would be a Christian, or thinks he would, but cannot satisfy his intellect of the certainty of word of Christ-he is a divided man. He has cast off his other armour; and this, the armour of God, he cannot take, for he has not proved it.
III. Think what the advent will be to such a mind. The day of the Lord of hosts will be “upon” it, and will bring it low. We fools inquired whether there was a day coming; and behold, it is come. While we inquired and reasoned and speculated, He of whom we doubted was carrying on His judgment upon us. He who was to come demanded fruit. He is come seeking fruit, and He finds nothing, but leaves only.
C. J. Vaughan, Nine Sermons, p. 47.
References: Isa 2:12.-J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages from the Prophets, vol. i., p. 1. Isa 2:16.-J. H. Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 365. Isa 2:17.-W. J. Knox-Little, Ibid., vol. xxi., p. 406. Isa 2:18.-G. John, Ibid., vol. xxii., p. 129. Isa 2:20.-H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2230. Isa 2:22.-J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages from the Prophets, p. 9. Isa 3:10, Isa 3:11.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 729; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 180; E. Mason, A Pastor’s Legacy, p. 206. Isa 3:11.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 17. Isa 4:1.-C. A. Fowler, Parochial Sermons, p. 1. Isa 4:2.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 273.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 2
Zions Future Glory and the Day of Jehovah
1. The glories in the latter days (Isa 2:1-4) 2. Exhortation to walk in the light (Isa 2:5) 3. The corruption of the people (Isa 2:6-9) 4. The day of Jehovah (Isa 2:10-22) The vision of verses 1-4 is altogether future. When Israel is converted and in possession of the land, when once more a house of Jehovah will stand in Israels land, then this great prediction will be fulfilled. Compare withMicah 4:1-55. The Day of the Lord (Jehovah) is the day of His visible manifestation to deal with the earth in judgment. Compare with Isa 24:1-23, etc.,Zep 1:1-18.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
saw: Isa 1:1, Isa 13:1, Amo 1:1, Mic 1:1, Mic 6:9, Hab 1:1
Reciprocal: 2Ki 19:2 – the son of Amoz Jer 1:1 – words Mic 4:1 – in the last Luk 24:47 – among Act 3:19 – when Act 13:47 – that thou Rom 11:25 – until 2Pe 3:12 – melt
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Christ in Isaiah
Isa 2:1-22
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
When Isaiah saw Christ in this chapter he saw Him in His Second Advent glory. Peter, in the Spirit, wrote of how the Prophets foretold the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow.
In this 2d chapter, Isaiah is given a foregleam of that wonderful hour which yet awaits the earth. He speaks of Christ upon the earth, but not upon the earth to suffer and to die, but the rather to rule and to reign.
Let us examine some of the things which Isaiah saw: 1. He saw the mountain of the Lord’s House established on top of the mountain and exalted above the hills. This is a marvelous symbolical language. We remember in the Book of Daniel, of a stone that was cut out from the mountain side, without hands. Daniel saw until that stone fell upon the great image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and smote the image on its feet, and brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the silver, and the gold.
Isaiah saw a similar vision. In Isa 2:12, Isa 2:14-15 he explains the meaning of what he saw. All of this is in line with many other visions in the Scriptures relative to Christ’s Return. In the Book of Revelation, chapter 6, we read much the same as in Isa 2:19. Here are the words in Isaiah, “And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His Majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth.”
2. He saw all nations flow unto the mountain of the Lord’s House. In explanation of this part of the vision we read, “And many people shall go up and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the House of the God of Jacob.” There is much in Isaiah relative to the Gentiles going up to Jerusalem.
Before Isaiah’s vision closes we are told, “The Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy rising.” Again, we read, “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish.”
Isaiah also said, “The Gentiles shall see Thy righteousness, and all kings Thy glory.”
3. He saw the Lord ruling among the nations. This is the third step of his vision. “Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people.”
4. He saw the earth at peace. Thus he spake. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Thus have we set before you a great theocracy with Jesus Christ, King of kings, and Lord of lords. The Lord is to be crowned with all authority and with all power, as He reigns on David’s throne.
I. SEEING CHRIST IN BIRTH (Isa 7:14)
In another sermon we spoke upon this Scripture and upon other Scriptures in Isaiah, relative to the birth of Christ, Just now we wish to emphasize this one thing: Isaiah saw in the birth of Jesus Christ, God incarnate. He announced that the Babe, should be called “Immanuel.” He also said in Isa 9:6 that His Name should be “The Everlasting Father,” and, “The Mighty God.”
In a manger on the hay,
There, incarnate God, once lay:
From the Father’s throne He came
To a world all sunk in shame.
“God with us.” Were ever words more expressive of the deeper meaning of the birth of Christ. God incarnate! God manifested in the flesh! God with us! In John’s Gospel we read, “(And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father).” It seems almost beyond human conceptions that the eternal Son; the Word which was forever with God and was God, should be found in fashion as a man, and should become obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.
How great is the magnificat of a multitude of angels as they ascribe praise unto the God-child saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!”
II. SEEING CHRIST AS GOD (Isa 43:3)
We have just seen how Isaiah in the Spirit saw Christ the Babe, as God. We now wish to turn our attention to a further wonderful thing-Isaiah prophesied that Israel would, one day, acknowledge Christ as God.
In the chapter in which we find our key verse, the Lord is saying unto Israel: “Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the East, and gather thee from the West; I will say to the North, Give up; and to the South, Keep not back: bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.” At that time the Lord will say to Israel, “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He: before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.”
We bless God in the anticipation of the day when Israel shall acknowledge the Deity of Jesus Christ. Not only will they acknowledge it, but the sure Word says, “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God.”
We can almost see the Prophet Isaiah filled with the Holy Ghost, as, in Christ’s stead, he calls to Israel saying, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”
Would that the Church of today were faithful in acclaiming the Deity of Jesus Christ. How we bow our heads in shame as we hear men blaspheming the Holy Name of God the Son, and Son of God. For our part, we worship Him, and crown Him the Lord of All.
III. SEEING THE DEATH OF CHRIST (Isa 53:3)
The 53d chapter of Isaiah carries God’s report of the rejected incarnate God. He is called the “Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Isaiah, therefore, saw not only a vision of God in the flesh but of God taking upon Him a body in order that He might die and suffer the Just for the unjust.
Isaiah’s vision of the death of Christ, is the vision of a substitutionary sacrifice. Eleven times in this 53d chapter of Isaiah we read the word “our” and “us” and expressions linking His anguish, as an anguish in our stead.
“He was wounded for our transgressions.” “With His stripes we are healed.” He made “His soul an offering for sin.” “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” These are among the words in which God revealed to Isaiah the Saviour’s death for His people. We need to remember His suffering and as we see Him on the Cross. We should also remember that in His sighs our songs were born; in His death we have our life.
We think of Him there, our sins He did bear,
He suffered in anguish alone;
He bowed down His head, expired in our stead,
He died to claim us as His own,
The Cross will ever stand before us as a substitutionary sacrifice. Isa 53:1-12, will ever remain the great Old Testament Calvary chapter. We ponder its message; we bend the knee; we bow the head; we are standing on holy ground!
IV. SEEING THE SALVATION OF CHRIST (Isa 45:22)
Some may be surprised to find a message of the how of salvation in the Book of Isaiah. Sinners, however, needed salvation then, even as now. Our key text says: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth: for I am God.” We are reminded of how Peter said in connection with the healing of the lame man, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other Name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
When the crowd left Christ, because of His redemptive message on the bread of life, He turned to His disciples and said: “Will ye also go away?” Peter answered, “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the Words of eternal life.”
Thus, we stand with Isaiah and his testimony. We hear Him say, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” Once more the Prophet sounds forth the salvation note when he says: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” (Isa 12:3).
Our minds now go to the Lord Jesus as He speaks to the woman of Samaria. He said: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up. into everlasting life.”
Once more the Prophet Isaiah says: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions” (Isa 44:22). This again is in line with the New Testament statement, “The Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Believers do not need to worry about their sins for the Lord has blotted them out. They are forever gone.
V. SEEING CHRIST’S FAITHFULNESS (Isa 49:15)
The story before us is that of a mother. The Prophet says: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” The Prophet also suggests that the maid may forget her ornaments, the bride may forget her attire, but there is One who never forgets, and who never forsakes, that One is God.
Our Lord carries our names engraven upon the palms of His hands. In the New Testament we read: “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son.”
The Book of Isaiah does not fail to record God’s faithfulness to a rebellious people. Isaiah tells us that for a little while, He seems to have forsaken them, but in loving kindness will He finally gather them. When He comes adown the sky, His Name will be called, “Faithful and True.” He will be faithful to every promise He has made. Isaiah says, “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth.” All day long has the Lord held forth His hands to a disobedient people. Yet, He has kept them during all the years as the apple of His eye.
VI. SEEING THE BLESSED HOPE OF CHRIST’S RETURN (Isa 59:19-20)
The Prophet Isaiah sees the dark days that shall mark the end time. He describes the enemy as coming in like a flood. However, the Spirit does not leave the Prophet in doubt as to Israel’s final destiny. He says: “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. And the Redeemer shall come to Zion.”
Isaiah, the seer cried: “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” The watchman said: “The morning cometh, and also the night.” These are the words of Isaiah, as he catches the vision of God’s new day.
In the Prophet’s earlier days he saw the king Uzziah who had reigned so long and so successfully fall under the wrath of God. It was in the same year that King Uzziah died, that Isaiah “saw also the Lord * * high and lifted up.”
Sometimes, we grow weary with our watching and our waiting for Christ’s Return. The world seems hopelessly engulfed in sorrow. Depression is on every hand. Men’s hearts are trembling with fear at the possibility of earth’s tomorrow. The Jewish people are still nationally scattered among the nations. We cry, therefore, Oh, Lord, how long! how long! We can almost catch the answer, “Behold, I come quickly.”
VII. SEEING CHRIST ON DAVID’S THRONE (Isa 9:6-7)
The Book of Isaiah, along with the other Prophets, gives a very definite testimony to the reestablishment of the throne of David, and to the restitution of the twelve tribes under one king.
There are some who would deny that Christ will sit upon David’s throne and rule over the House of Jacob. To deny this is to deny the Word of the Lord by the Prophet. Jesus said concerning His first coming and His death, “That all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me.” The Apostle Paul said: “Believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets.”
Shall we then step aside from the faith of Christ, and of Paul, and reject Isaiah’s prophecy? Let those who do reject it remember how it is written: “And they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the Prophets which were read every Sabbath Day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.”
When Isaiah speaks of the Christ being born, and of the Son being given, He quickly adds, “And the government shall be upon His shoulder.” Then he asserts, “Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His Kingdom to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.” Then the Spirit, through the Prophet, adds: “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.”
How wonderful to consider the names which the Spirit in our text announced that Jesus should bear, as He takes the government. “His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
AN ILLUSTRATION
How marvelously does Isaiah peal forth the glories of Christ. A poor Italian youth, ambitious to make a set of bells unequalled in the world for beauty, labored hard and long in his own country to bring them to perfection. They were hung in a monastery in Italy, and the whole countryside was charmed by their sweet melody. The successful artist purchased a house in the district and for years spent his evenings listening to the sweet music of his bells. War came; the bells were stolen and carried away, he knew not where. Old and poor, he bade good-bye to his native Italy, and set forth in search of the music he loved so well. His tired feet touched the shores of many lands; at last he came to Ireland.
One evening, just as the sun was going down, he was sailing up the river that runs close by Limerick, when, borne on the evening’s zephyr, there came stealing into his ears the sweet chimes of melodious bells. He sat enraptured; he knew that he was not mistaken, and that the entrancing melody was the music of his own long lost and cherished bells. He set his face, now wet with tears, toward the tower whence the enchanting strains were coming; and as the vessel sailed into port, his wanderings were over. The light had faded from his eyes, his fingers had loosened their hold, and his soul was wafted away to the sweet music of his own bells.
Oh, child of God, have you lost the music that once delighted your soul? Has the world stolen from you the joy bells of your old-time faith and devotion? You need not wander the world about nor wait till death to find the music. The bells are in your soul, and Jesus is able to touch them into “music so sweet the angels will stoop to listen.” If those bells have ceased to ring, there is a reason, which God knows and you know. Let the Son of God forgive you and restore the music to your soul.-W. E. Biederwolf.
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
2:1
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Isa 2:1. The word that Isaiah saw The matter, or thing, as the Hebrew word, , commonly signifies; the prophecy or vision. He speaks of the prophecy contained in this and the two following chapters, which makes one continued discourse. The first five verses of this chapter foretel the kingdom of the Messiah, the conversion of the Gentiles, and their admission into it. From the 6th verse to the end of this second chapter is foretold the punishment of the unbelieving Jews for their idolatrous practices, their confidence in their own strength, and distrust of Gods protection: and, moreover, the destruction of idolatry in consequence of the establishment of the Messiahs kingdom. The whole third chapter, with Isa 2:1, of the fourth, is a prophecy of the calamities of the Babylonian invasion and captivity; with a particular amplification of the distress of the proud and luxurious daughters of Sion. Isa 4:2-6, promises to the remnant, which shall have escaped this severe purgation, a future restoration to the favour and protection of God. This prophecy was probably delivered in the time of Jotham, or, perhaps, in that of Uzziah, to which time not any of his prophecies (and he prophesied in their days) is so applicable as that of these chapters. Bishop Lowth.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 2:1. The word that Isaiah saw. In these distressing times, when the Jewish church and state were shaken to the very centre, the Messiah spoke to the prophet, and showed him the new-testament church, built on a rock; of which it is said, God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. Psa 46:5.
Isa 2:2. It shall come to pass in the last days. The days of the Messiah, as this phrase always designates. Hos 3:5. Jer 48:47. Joe 2:28. Eze 38:8; Eze 38:16. Dan 10:14. The decay of judaism, on whom, says Paul, the ends of the world are come.The mountain of the Lords house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills. The prophet Micah quotes the whole of this passage, with the additional circumstance, that Zion, because of the wickedness of the Jews, should be plowed like a field, Isa 3:12 : which synchronises the time with that of the Messiah. The rabbins in succession say, that this mountain means Jerusalem. Our Saviour, on the contrary, describes Jerusalem as a carcase for the Roman eagles. St. Paul regards the temple as vanishing away, and Jerusalem as full of blood; but adds, Jerusalem above is free, and is the mother of us all. Ye are come to mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Gal 4:26. Heb 12:22. Some contend here, that the true sense of the text is, The mountain of the house of Jehovah, shall be established THE TOP of the mountains; equivalent to a promise, that christianity shall be the religion of the world.
Isa 2:3. Out of Zion shall go forth the law. The new and living law, the law of faith and love, the new covenant in all its glory. Here we ask the Jew, what other law, except the law of Christ, ever went out of Jerusalem; a law published by a new order of ministers, the servants and hand-maidens of the Lord. See more on Mic 3:4.
Isa 2:5. Oh house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord. Let us look forward to those happy times, that the splendour of the Messiahs righteousness and glory may be reflected upon us, that we may already see his day, and reckon his kingdom as near at hand.
Isa 2:19. They shall go into the holes of the rocks. These words seem to imply that they shall hide their idols in holes and caverns.
REFLECTIONS.
The Jews uniformly divided the days, ages, or dispensations into three; the time of the patriarchs, the time of Moses, and the time of the Messiah. We have here therefore a most luminous prophecy, that there shall be a new temple, not on mount Moriah, but high above all hills. This temple the holy apostles have largely expounded of the christian church, built on Christ the sure foundation, and on the secondary foundation of prophets and apostles; a temple against which neither gentile kings, nor the gates of hell shall ever prevail.
We have also a prophecy of a new people being called to worship there; many nations, even the polished and barbarous heathens in every part of the earth. This is the common theme of Hebrew prophecy. Its accomplishment began when the gentiles were admitted into the christian church, and it shall be completed in the glory of the latter day. It shall be a glorious age of prayer and preaching. The spirit and the bride, yea, heaven and earth shall say, oh come, let us go up. They pledge themselves at the same time to keep the statutes and judgments which God shall teach. And whereas they formerly used to go and come; now they shall go and abide in his presence for ever.
The character of the Messiahs kingdom is righteousness and peace. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares. So it is now in the heart, and in the church, just so far as the kingdom of Christ prevails. The spirit of piety is abhorrent of war. The church groans and travails till war shall be no more; and it is with much doubt and diffidence that she now gives the smallest sanction to war, as a rod of correction to the wicked. She is aware that salvation by prayer is better than salvation by arms. It not only raises the confidence of a nation in God, but it produces striking effects on the enemies heart.
The prophecy closes, as is usual on this subject, with a denunciation of judgment on all the disobedient world. On nations as rich as Britain, on the ships of Tarshish, on the pleasant pictures; it should be, on the merchandise of those pleasant or gallant ships. Then let us cease from man, and trust in God. It announces the waning of the Jewish moon, and the falling of the Roman stars, who should hide in the caverns of the mountains from the wrath of the Lamb. Rev 6:17.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 2:1-4. Zion the Worlds Religious Centre, and the Reign of Universal Peace.The title in Isa 2:1 is a later addition, unrelated to the important oracle Isa 2:2-4. This oracle, with verbal differences, occurs in Mic 4:1-3*. It is probably post-exilic. The very high significance attached to Zion is strange in the eighth century; the idea of its physical exaltation is akin to Apocalyptic rather than prophecy. Moreover, Jer 26:18 suggests that Micah predicted irretrievable doom for Zion. Duhm thinks that, like Isa 9:2-7, Isa 11:1-8, it belongs to Isaiahs old age; he calls them his swan-songs. This would accord with the wide outlook and large charity of this poem: yet the late date is more probable.
In the latter days, i.e. the beginning of the Messianic times, the Temple hill will be physically exalted above all other mountains, and all nations will stream to Zion to learn Yahwehs ways. Jerusalem is the source of religious knowledge, it is there that Yahweh makes known His will. It is noteworthy that this instruction (mg.) is not imparted by messengers sent out to the heathen, but by Yahweh Himself in Zion. He acts not only as teacher, but as arbitrator. The nations accept His decisions as final, and therefore do not need to settle their disputes by war, so turn their weapons into implements of husbandry. (For the reverse of this see Joe 3:10.)
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
1. God’s desire for Israel 2:1-4
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The glorious future of Israel presented here is in striking contrast to the condition of the nation in Isaiah’s day described in chapter 1. An almost identical prophecy appears in Mic 4:1-3 (cf. Psalms 2, 46). Perhaps Isaiah quoted Micah here, or Micah quoted Isaiah, or both of them quoted another prophet. [Note: See Delitzsch, 1:111.]
"The last days" is a phrase that describes a distant time from the perspective of the prophet. The Hebrews regarded history as a series of days, the days of their lives. The title of the Books of Chronicles means literally "the words of the days." When these days come to an end, in their last part, human history on this earth will end. New Testament Christians applied this term to the time following Messiah’s coming (Act 2:17; Heb 1:2; Jas 5:3; 1Pe 1:5; 1Pe 1:20; 2Pe 3:3; 1Jn 2:18). Here, it must mean after His second coming, since these conditions did not follow His first coming. [Note: See John H. Sailhamer, "Evidence from Isaiah 2," in A Case for Premillennialism: A New Consensus, pp. 79-102.]
"The expression ’the last days’ (acharith hayyamim, ’the end of the days’), which does not occur anywhere else in Isaiah, is always used in an eschatological sense. It never refers to the course of history immediately following the time being, but invariably indicates the furthest point in the history of this life-the point which lies on the outermost limits of the speaker’s horizon." [Note: Delitzsch, 1:113.]
The term "mountain" is sometimes a symbol of a kingdom, nation, authority, or rule elsewhere in the prophetic writings (e.g., Dan 2:35; Dan 2:44-45; Amo 4:1; Rev 17:9-11). The ancients also regarded mountains as the homes of the gods. If Isaiah was using "mountain" as a figure of speech, he meant that Israel and her God would be the most highly exalted in the earth eventually. This will be the case during Messiah’s earthly reign. The reference to "the mountain of the house of Yahweh" (Isa 2:2), however, may indicate that the prophet had a more literal meaning in mind. He may have meant that the actual mountain on which the temple stood would be thrust higher in elevation. This may happen (cf. Eze 40:2; Zec 14:4; Zec 14:10), but the primary implication seems to be that Israel and Yahweh will be exalted in the world.
"The analogy of streams is particularly apt, because the major traditional oppressors of Israel were associated with great rivers-the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (cf. Isa 8:6-8)." [Note: Grogan, p. 35.]
Israel’s God would be recognized as the God, and she would be seen as the nation among nations. Under the Old Covenant, the Israelites made pilgrimages to Jerusalem three times a year, but in the future the entire world will go there. In that day, Yahweh’s instruction will go forth from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Isa 2:3). Jerusalem will be Messiah’s capital city at this time. [Note: See John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy, p. 121.] He will judge everyone, and people will live in peace (Isa 2:4). There will be a rebellion against Messiah’s rule at the end of the Millennium (cf. Rev 20:7-10), but this will involve unbelievers fighting against Him, not one another.
"The prophet saw the new Jerusalem of the last days on this side, and the new Jerusalem of the new earth on the other (Rev. xxi. 10), blended as it were together, and did not distinguish the one from the other." [Note: Delitzsch, 1:113.]
Isaiah’s description pictures a return to paradisiacal conditions (cf. Isa 11:6-9). The amillennial interpretation of this passage sees the church as fulfilling what Isaiah wrote of Jerusalem and Judah, and the gospel as going out to the whole world, as illustrated by the following quotation.
"Such instruments [as swords, plowshares, spears, and pruning hooks] are mentioned only as symbols" [Note: Young, 1:109.]
"From whence comes peace? From the recognition that God is the source of all good, that our needs and our destiny can be submitted to his judgment, and from the knowledge that he does all things well. . . . Until persons and nations have come to God to learn his ways and walk in them, peace is an illusion." [Note: Oswalt, p. 118.]
Disarmament now is suicide because of man’s greed and aggression. Nevertheless, modern people should trust in the Lord more than in their military power, as the next section emphasizes.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The presence of another superscription to the following prophecies (cf. Isa 1:1), the only other one in Isaiah, bears witness to the composite nature of the book; it consists of several different prophecies. Probably one appears here to set off the prophecies that follow (in chs. 2-4 or chs. 2-5) from what preceded (in ch. 1).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER II
THE THREE JERUSALEMS
740-735 B.C.
Isa 2:1-22; Isa 3:1-26; Isa 4:1-6
AFTER the general introduction, in chapter 1, to the prophecies of Isaiah, there comes another portion of the book, of greater length, but nearly as distinct as the first. It covers four chapters, the second to the sixth, all of them dating from the same earliest period of Isaiahs ministry, before 735 B.C. They deal with exactly the same subjects, but they differ greatly inform. One section (chapters 2-4.) consists of a number of short utterances-evidently not all spoken at the same time, for they conflict with one another-a series of consecutive prophecies, that probably represent the stages of conviction through which Isaiah passed in his prophetic apprenticeship; a second section (chapter 5) is a careful and artistic restatement, in parable and oration, of the truths he has thus attained; while a third section (chapter 6) is narrative, probably written subsequently to the first two, but describing an inspiration and official call, which must have preceded them both. The more one examines chapters 2-6., and finds that they but express the same truths in different forms, the more one is confirmed in some such view of them as this, which, it is believed, the following exposition will justify. chapters 5 and 6 are twin appendices to the long summary in 2-4: chapter 5 a public vindication and enforcement of the results of that summary, chapter 6 a private vindication to the prophets heart of the very same truths, by a return to the secret moment of their original inspiration. We may assign 735 B.C., just before or just after the accession of Ahaz, as the date of the latest of these prophecies. The following is their historical setting.
For more than half a century the kingdom of Judah, under two powerful and righteous monarchs, had enjoyed the greatest prosperity. Uzziah strengthened the borders, extended the supremacy and vastly increased the resources of his little State, which, it is well to remember, was in its own size not larger than three average Scottish counties. He won back for Judah the port of Elah on the Red Sea, built a navy, and restored the commerce with the far East, which Solomon began. He overcame, in battle or by the mere terror of his name, the neighbouring nations-the Philistines that dwelt in cities, and the wandering tribes of desert Arabs. The Ammonites brought him gifts. With the wealth, which the East by tribute or by commerce poured into his little principality, Uzziah fortified his borders and his capital, undertook large works of husbandry and irrigation, organised a powerful standing army, and supplied it with a siege artillery capable of slinging arrows and stones. “His name spread far abroad, for he was marvellously helped till he was strong.” His son Jotham (740-735 B.C.) continued his father s policy with nearly all his fathers success. He built cities and castles, quelled a rebellion among his tributaries, and caused their riches to flow faster still into Jerusalem. But while Jotham bequeathed to his country a sure defence and great wealth, and to his people a strong spirit and prestige among the nations, he left another bequest, which robbed these of their value-the son who succeeded him. In 735 Jotham died and Ahaz became king. He was very young, and stepped to the throne from the hareem. He brought to the direction of the government the petulant will of a spoiled child, the mind of an intriguing and superstitious, woman. It was-when the national policy felt the paralysis consequent on these that Isaiah published at least the later part of the prophecies now marked off as chapters 2-4 of his book. “My people,” he cries-“my people! children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”
Isaiah had been born into the flourishing nation while Uzziah was king. The great events of that monarchs reign were his education, the still grander hopes they prompted the passion of his virgin fancy. He must have absorbed as the very temper of his youth this national consciousness which swelled so proudly in Judah under Uzziah. But the accession of such a king as Ahaz, while it was sure to let loose the passions and follies fostered by a period of rapid increase in luxury, could not fail to afford to Judahs enemies the long-deferred opportunity of attacking her. It was an hour both of the manifestation of sin and of the judgment of sin-an hour in which, while the majesty of Judah, sustained through two great reigns, was about to disappear in the follies of a third, the majesty of Judahs God should become more conspicuous than ever. Of this Isaiah had been privately conscious, as we shall see, for five years. “In the year that king Uzziah died,” (740), the young Jew “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.” Startled into prophetic consciousness by the awful contrast between an earthly majesty that had so long fascinated men, but now sank into a lepers grave, and the heavenly, which rose sovereign and everlasting above it, Isaiah had gone on to receive conviction of his peoples sin and certain punishment. With the accession of Ahaz, five years later, his own political experience was so far developed as to permit of his expressing in their exact historical effects the awful principles of which he had received foreboding when Uzziah died. What we find in chapters 2-4 is a record of the struggle of his mind towards this expression; it is the summary, as we have already said, of Isaiahs apprenticeship.
“The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” We do not know anything of Isaiahs family or of the details of his upbringing. He was a member of some family of Jerusalem, and in intimate relations with the Court. It has been believed that he was of royal blood, but it matters little whether this be true or not. A spirit so wise and masterful as his did not need social rank to fit it for that intimacy with princes which has doubtless suggested the legend of his royal descent. What does matter is Isaiahs citizenship in Jerusalem, for this colours all his prophecy. More than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal, Florence to Dante, is Jerusalem to Isaiah. She is his immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the one thing worth preserving amidst its disasters, the summit of those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. He has traced for us the main features of her position and some of the lines of her construction, many of the great figures of her streets, the fashions of her women, the arrival of embassies, the effect of rumours. He has painted her aspect in triumph, in siege, in famine, and in earthquake; war filling her valleys with chariots, and again nature rolling tides of fruitfulness up to her gates; her moods of worship and panic and profligacy-till we see them all as clearly as the shadow following the sunshine, and the breeze the breeze, across the cornfields of our own summers.
If he takes wider observation of mankind, Jerusalem is his watch-tower. It is for her defence he battles through fifty years of statesmanship, and all his prophecy may be said to travail in anguish for her new birth. He was never away from her walls, but not even the psalms of the captives by the rivers of Babylon, with the desire of exile upon them, exhibit more beauty and pathos than the lamentations which Isaiah poured upon Jerusalems sufferings or the visions in which he described her future solemnity and peace.
It is not with surprise, therefore, that we find the first prophecies of Isaiah directed upon his mother city: “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” There is little about Judah in these chapters: the country forms but a fringe to the capital.
Before we look into the subject of the prophecy, however, a short digression is necessary on the manner in which it is presented to us. It is not a reasoned composition or argument we have here; it is a vision, it is the word which Isaiah saw. The expression is vague, often abused and in need of defining. Vision is not employed here to express any magical display before the eyes of the prophet of the very words which he was to speak to the people, or any communication to his thoughts by dream or ecstasy. They are higher qualities of “vision” which these chapters unfold. There is, first of all, the power of forming an ideal, of seeing and describing a thing in the fulfilment of all the promise that is in it. But these prophecies are much more remarkable for two other powers of inward vision, to which we give the names of insight and intuition-insight into human character, intuition of Divine principles-“clear knowledge of what man is and how God will act”-a keen discrimination of the present state of affairs in Judah, and unreasoned conviction of moral truth and the Divine will. The original meaning of the Hebrew word saw, which is used in the title to this series, is to cleave, or split; then to see into, to see through, to get down beneath the surface of things and discover their real nature. And what characterises the bulk of these visions is penetrativeness, the keenness of a man who will not be deceived by an outward show that he delights to hold up to our scorn, but who has a conscience for the inner worth of things and for their future consequences. To lay stress on the moral meaning of the prophets vision is not to grudge, but to emphasise its inspiration by God.
Of that inspiration Isaiah was himself assured. It was Gods Spirit that enabled him to see thus keenly; for he saw things keenly, net only as men count moral keenness, but as God Himself sees them, in their value in His sight and in their attractiveness for His love and pity. In this prophecy there occurs a striking expression “the eyes of the glory of God.” It was the vision of the Almighty Searcher and Judge, burning through mans pretence, with which the prophet felt himself endowed. This then was the second element in his vision-to penetrate mens hearts as God Himself penetrated them, and constantly, without squint or blur, to see right from wrong in their eternal difference. And the third element is the intuition of Gods will, the perception of what line of action He will take. This last, of course, forms the distinct prerogative of Hebrew prophecy, that power of vision which is its climax; the moral situation being clear, to see then how God will act upon it.
Under these three powers of vision Jerusalem, the prophets city, is presented to us-Jerusalem in three lights, really three Jerusalems. First, there is flashed out {Isa 2:2-5} a vision of the ideal city, Jerusalem idealised and glorified. Then comes {Isa 2:6 – Isa 4:1} a very realistic picture, a picture of the actual Jerusalem. And lastly at the close of the prophecy {Isa 4:2-6} we have a vision of Jerusalem as she shall be after God has taken her in hand-very different indeed from the ideal with which the prophet began. Here are three successive motives or phases of prophecy, which, as we have said, in all probability summarise the early ministry of Isaiah, and present him to us first, as the idealist or visionary; second, as the realist or critic; and, third, as the prophet proper or revealer of Gods actual will.
I. THE IDEALIST
{Isa 2:1-5}
All men who have shown our race how great things are possible have had their inspiration in dreaming of the impossible. Reformers, who at death were content to have lived for the moving forward but one inch of some of their fellow-men, began by believing themselves able to lift the whole world at once. Isaiah was no exception to this human fashion. His first vision was that of a Utopia, and his first belief that his countrymen would immediately realise it. He lifts up to us a very grand picture of a vast commonwealth centred in Jerusalem. Some think he borrowed it from an older prophet; Micah has it also; it may have been the ideal of the age. But, at any rate, if we are not to take Isa 2:5 in scorn, Isaiah accepted this as his own. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lords house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.” The prophets own Jerusalem shall be the light of the world, the school and temple of the earth, the seat of the judgment of the Lord, when He shall reign over the nations, and all mankind shall dwell in peace beneath Him. It is a glorious destiny, and as its light shines from the far-off horizon, the latter days, in which the prophet sees it, what wonder that he is possessed and cries aloud, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord!” It seems to the young prophets hopeful heart as if at once that ideal would be realised, as if by his own word he could lift his people to its fulfilment.
But that is impossible, and Isaiah perceives so as soon as he turns from the far-off horizon to the city at his feet, as soon as he leaves tomorrow alone and deals with today. The next verses of the chapter-from Isa 2:6 onwards-stand in strong contrast to those which have described Israels ideal. There Zion is full of the law and Jerusalem of the word of the Lord, the one religion flowing over from this centre upon the world. Here into the actual Jerusalem they have brought all sorts of foreign worship and heathen prophets; “they are replenished from the East, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and strike hands with the children of strangers.” There all nations come to worship at Jerusalem; here her thought and faith are scattered over the idolatries of all nations. The ideal Jerusalem is full of spiritual blessings; the actual, of the spoils of trade. There the swords are beat into ploughshares and the. spears into pruning-hooks; here are vast and novel armaments, horses and chariots. There the Lord alone is worshipped; here the city is crowded with idols. The real Jerusalem could not possibly be more different from the ideal, nor its inhabitants as they are from what the prophet had confidently called on them to be.
II. THE REALIST
{Isa 2:6 – Isa 4:1}
Therefore Isaiahs attitude and tone suddenly change. The visionary becomes a realist, the enthusiast a cynic, the seer of the glorious city of God the prophet of Gods judgment. The recoil is absolute in style, temper, and thought, down to the very figures of speech which he uses. Before, Isaiah had seen, as it were, a lifting process at work, “Jerusalem in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills.” Now he beholds nothing but depression. “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and haughty, upon all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.” Nothing in the great civilisation, which he had formerly glorified, is worth preserving. The high towers, fenced walls, ships of Tarshish, treasures and armour must all perish; even the hills lifted by his imagination shall be bowed down, and “the Lord alone be exalted in that day.” This recoil reaches its extreme in the last verse of the chapter. The prophet, who had believed so much in man as to think possible an immediate commonwealth of nations, believes in man now so little that he does not hold him worth preserving: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?”
Attached to this general denunciation are some satiric descriptions, in the third chapter, of the anarchy to which society in Jerusalem is fast being reduced under its childish and effeminate king. The scorn of these passages is scathing; “the eyes of the glory of God” burn through every rank, fashion, and ornament in the town. King and court are not spared; the elders and princes are rigorously denounced. But by far the most striking effort of the prophets boldness is his prediction of the overthrow of Jerusalem itself (Isa 3:8). What it cost Isaiah to utter and the people to hear we can only partly measure. To his own passionate patriotism it must have felt like treason, to the blind optimism of the popular religion it doubtless appeared the rankest heresy-to aver that the holy city, inviolate and almost unthreatened since the day David brought to her the ark of the Lord, and destined by the voice of her prophets, including Isaiah himself, to be established upon the tops of the mountains, was now to fall into ruin. But Isaiahs conscience overcomes his sense of consistency, and he who has just proclaimed the eternal glory of Jerusalem is provoked by his knowledge of her citizens sins to recall his words and intimate her destruction. It may have been that Isaiah was partly emboldened to so novel a threat, by his knowledge of the preparations which Syria and Israel were already making for the invasion of Judah. The prospect of Jerusalem, as the centre of a vast empire subject to Jehovah, however natural it was under a successful ruler like Uzziah, became, of course, unreal when every one of Uzziahs and Jothams tributaries had risen in revolt against their successor, Ahaz. But of these outward movements Isaiah tells us nothing. He is wholly engrossed with Judahs sin. It is his growing acquaintance with the corruption of his fellow countrymen that has turned his back on the ideal city of his opening ministry, and changed him into a prophet of Jerusalems ruin. “Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory.” Judge, prophet, and elder, all the upper ranks and useful guides of the people, must perish. It is a sign of the degradation to which society shall be reduced, when Isaiah with keen sarcasm pictures the despairing people choosing a certain man to be their ruler because he alone has a coat to his back! {Isa 3:6}
With increased scorn Isaiah turns lastly upon the women of Jerusalem, {Isa 3:16-26; Isa 4:1-2} and here perhaps the change which has passed over him since his opening prophecy is most striking. One likes to think of how the citizens of Jerusalem took this alteration in their prophets temper. We know how popular so optimist a prophecy as that of the mountain of the Lords house must have been, and can imagine how men and women loved the young face, bright with a far-off light, and the dream of an ideal that had no quarrel with the present. “But what a change is this that has come over him, who speaks not of tomorrow, but of today, who has brought his gaze from those distant horizons to our streets, who stares every man in the face, {Isa 3:9} and makes the women feel that no pin and trimming, no ring and bracelet, escape his notice! Our loved prophet has become an impudent scorner!” Ah, men and women of Jerusalem, beware of those eyes! “The glory of God” is burning in them; they see you through and through, and they tell us that all your armour and the “show of your countenance,” and your foreign fashions are as nothing, for there are corrupt hearts below. This is your judgment, that “instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness, and instead of a girdle a rope, and instead of well-set hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall be desolate and sit upon the ground!”
This was the climax of the prophets judgment. If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot. If the women are corrupt the state is moribund.
III. THE PROPHET OF THE LORD
{Isa 4:2-6}
IS there, then, no hope for Jerusalem? Yes, but not where the prophet sought it at first, in herself, and not in the way he offered it-by the mere presentation of an ideal. There is hope, there is more-there is certain salvation in the Lord, but it only comes after judgment. Contrast that opening picture of the new Jerusalem with this closing one, and we shall find their difference to lie in two things. There the city is more prominent than the Lord, here the Lord is more prominent than the city; there no word of judgment, here judgment sternly emphasised as the indispensable way towards the blessed future. A more vivid sense of the Person of Jehovah Himself, a deep conviction of the necessity of chastisement: these are what Isaiah has gained during his early ministry, without losing hope or heart for the future. The bliss shall come only when the Lord shall “have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” It is a corollary of all this that the participants of that future shall be many fewer than in the first vision of the prophet. The process of judgment must weed men out, and in place of all nations coming to Jerusalem, to share its peace and glory, the prophet can speak now only of Israel-and only of a remnant of Israel. “The escaped of Israel, the left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem.” This is a great change in Isaiahs ideal, from the supremacy of Israel over all nations to the bare survival of a remnant of his people.
Is there not in this threefold vision a parallel and example for our own civilisation and our thoughts about it? All work and wisdom begin in dreams. We must see our Utopias before we start to build our stone and lime cities.
“It takes a soul
To move a body; it takes a high-souled man
To move the masses even to a cleaner stye;
It takes the ideal to blow an inch inside
The dust of the actual.”
But the light of our ideals dawns upon us only to show how poor by nature are the mortals who are called to accomplish them. The ideal rises still as to Isaiah only to exhibit the poverty of the real. When we lift our eyes from the hills of vision, and rest them on our fellow-men, hope and enthusiasm die out of us. Isaiahs disappointment is that of every one who brings down his gaze from the clouds to the streets. Be our ideal ever so desirable, be we ever so persuaded of its facility, the moment we attempt to apply it we shall be undeceived. Society cannot be regenerated all at once. There is an expression which Isaiah emphasises in his moment of cynicism: “The show of their countenance doth witness against them.” It tells us that when he called his countrymen to turn to the light he lifted upon them he saw nothing but the exhibition of their sin made plain. When we bring light to a cavern whose inhabitants have lost their eyes by the darkness, the light does not make them see; we have to give them eyes again. Even so no vision or theory of a perfect state-the mistake which all young reformers make- can regenerate society. It will only reveal social corruption, and sicken the heart of the reformer himself. For the possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed-work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of tomorrow. “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted?” In this despair, through which every worker for God and man must pass, many a warm heart has grown cold, many an intellect become paralysed. There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiahs. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes to man are saving purposes, and that with Him there is an inexhaustible source of mercy and virtue. So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith, as from beneath Isaiahs darkest verses that glorious passage suddenly bursts like uncontrollable spring from the very feet of winter. “For that day shall the spring of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.” This is all it is possible to say. There must be a future for man, because God loves him, and God reigns. That future can be reached only through judgment, because God is righteous.
To put it another way: All of us who live to work for our fellow-men or who hope to lift them higher by our word begin with our own visions of a great future. These visions, though our youth lends to them an original generosity and enthusiasm, are, like Isaiahs, largely borrowed. The progressive instincts of the age into which we are born and the mellow skies of prosperity combine with our own ardour to make our ideal one of splendour. Persuaded of its facility, we turn to real life to apply it. A few years pass. We not only find mankind too stubborn to be forced into our moulds, but we gradually become aware of Another Moulder at work upon our subject, and we stand aside in awe to watch His operations. Human desires and national ideals are not always fulfilled; philosophic theories are discredited by the evolution of fact. Uzziah does not reign for ever; the sceptre falls to Ahaz: progress is checked, and the summer of prosperity draws to an end. Under duller skies ungilded judgment comes to view, cruel and inexorable, crushing even the peaks on which we built our future, yet purifying men and giving earnest of a better future, too. And so life, that mocked the control of our puny fingers, bends groaning to the weight of an Almighty Hand. God also, we perceive as we face facts honestly, has His ideal for men; and though He works so slowly towards His end that our restless eyes are too impatient to follow His order, He yet reveals all that shall be to the humbled heart and the soul emptied of its own visions. Awed and chastened, we look back from His Presence to our old ideals. We are still able to recognise their grandeur and generous hope for men. But we see now how utterly unconnected they are with the present-castles in the air, with no ladders to them from the earth. And even if they were accessible, still to our eyes, purged by gazing on Gods own ways, they would no more appear desirable. Look back on Isaiahs early ideal from the light of his second vision of the future. For all its grandeur, that picture of Jerusalem is not wholly attractive. Is there not much national arrogance in it? Is it not just the imperfectly idealised reflection of an age of material prosperity such as that of Uzziahs was? Pride is in it, a false optimism, the highest good to be reached without moral conflict. But here is the language of pity, rescue with difficulty, rest only after sore struggle and stripping, salvation by the bare arm of God. So do our imaginations for our own future or for that of the race always contrast with what He Himself has in store for us, promised freely out of His great grace to our unworthy hearts, yet granted in the end only to those who pass towards it through discipline, tribulation, and fire.
This, then, was Isaiahs apprenticeship, and its net result was to leave him with the remnant for his ideal: the remnant and Jerusalem secured as its rallying-point.